HE ALTHC ARE SPECIAL SEC TION: FOCUSING ON COVID-19 DECEMBER 2020
DR. ANNE ZINK
Chief Medical Officer Alaska Department of Health and Social Services
DECEMBER 2020
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CONTENTS DECEMBER 2020 | VOLUME 37 | NUMBER 12 | AKBIZMAG.COM
FE AT UR E S 10 FINANCE
24 TOURISM
Ask An Expert
Tourism Takeaways
Tax planning strategies for 2021 By Tracy Barbour
Insights into 2020 and beyond from visitor bureaus around the state
56 OIL & GAS
By Tracy Barbour
It All Starts with Safety HSE professionals help protect Alaska’s oil and gas workers By Amy Newman
62 TRANSPORTATION
Getting Creative with Cargo Alaska’s transportation companies keep the cargo coming By Julie Stricker
68 CONSTRUCTION It’s All Connected
How the Internet of Things is rewiring our facilities
Waste Management in Rural Alaska
Building waste management systems for healthier communities By Isaac Stone Simonelli
Ahtna Environmental, Inc.
16 ENVIRONMENTAL
Sherman Hogue | Explore Fairbanks
By Isaac Stone Simonelli
QUICK READS 8 FROM THE EDITOR
74 INSIDE ALASKA BUSINESS
78 ALASKA TRENDS
74 ECONOMIC INDICATORS
76 RIGHT MOVES
80 OFF THE CUFF
4 | December 2020
Alaska Business www.akbizmag.com
We’ve always believed in Alaska. And for nearly a century, First National has helped Alaskans build strong, local businesses and communities. Together, we can build a brighter future. Like you, we’re here for the long haul.
CONTENTS DECEMBER 2020 | VOLUME 37 | NUMBER 12 | AKBIZMAG.COM
S P E C I A L S E C T I O N : H E A LT H C A R E 32 THE CLOUDY COVID-19 ECONOMY
After almost a year of the pandemic, the state's economic future remains murky By Isaac Stone Simonelli
40 CORRALLING COVID-19 Alaska sets a high bar for COVID-19 testing By Vanessa Orr
52 A LOT OF LOGISTICS
Alaska healthcare professionals contemplate COVID-19 vaccine distribution plan
46 TRACKING THE PANDEMIC
Contact tracing ramps up as COVID-19 cases continue to increase By Vanessa Orr
Yukon-Kuskokwim Health Corporation
By Amy Newman
ABOUT THE COVER
How Alaska’s healthcare system is adapting to this pandemic—and preparing for the next By Danny Kreilkamp
Kerry Tasker
36 WHAT’S WORKED, WHAT HASN’T, AND WHAT’S NEXT
You might not recognize her without the mask, but the subject of our cover is the woman helping lead Alaska's charge against COVID-19: Dr. Anne Zink. Between live-streaming public health updates from her home office, answering community questions in the Department of Health and Social Service’s ECHO series, and volunteering at Mat-Su Regional clinic— on top of her “normal” workload as the state’s Chief Medical Officer—the busiest person in town still managed to set aside some time to speak with Alaska Business. Zink’s diagnosis on the current condition of Alaska’s healthcare system can be found in our cover story, “What’s Worked, What Hasn’t, and What’s Next.” We’re grateful to Zink for being so accommodating and allowing us to feature her in our annual healthcare special section. We couldn’t have asked for a better figure to represent the efforts of healthcare workers across the state. With socialdistancing measures solidly in place, our photographer shot the DHSS honcho outside her home—a yurt in the Mat-Su Valley. Photograph by Kerry Tasker
Alaska Business (ISSN 8756-4092) is published monthly by Alaska Business Publishing Co., Inc. 501 W. Northern Lights Boulevard, Suite 100, Anchorage, Alaska 99503-2577; Telephone: (907) 276-4373. © 2020 Alaska Business Publishing Co. All rights reserved. No part of this publication May be reproduced without written permission from the publisher. Alaska Business accepts no responsibility for unsolicited materials; they will not be returned unless accompanied by a stamped, self addressed envelope. One-year subscription is $39.95 and includes twelve issues (print + digital) and the annual Power List. Single issues of the Power List are $15 each. Single issues of Alaska Business are $4.99 each; $5.99 for the July & December issues. Send subscription orders and address changes to circulation@akbizmag.com. To order back issues ($9.99 each including postage) visit simplecirc.com/back_issues/alaska-business.
6 | December 2020
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OUR COMMUNITY NEEDS US. Now more than ever. “Improving the financial wellness of everyone in our community benefits our business, our clients, our employees, and our neighbors. Giving back through our community campaign each year is a powerful way to demonstrate our commitment to ensuring everyone has opportunities to thrive. We are proud to be part of the United Way community of donors, volunteers, advocates, and partners working together to help our city respond, recover, and emerge stronger.� Lori McCaffrey President, Alaska Market United Way of Anchorage
FROM THE EDITOR
VOLUME 37, #12 EDITORIAL STAFF
Stronger
Apart
Managing Editor Kathryn Mackenzie 257-2907 editor@akbizmag.com
Associate/Web Editor Tasha Anderson 257-2902 tanderson@akbizmag.com
Digital and Social Media Specialist Arie Henry 257-2910 ahenry@akbizmag.com
Staff Writer Danny Kreilkamp
W
hat a year, right? Last year around this time we were expecting an economic recovery just around the corner, in no small part due to an anticipated recordbreaking year for tourism in Alaska. But even though the Lower 48 can sometimes feel like a world away, it’s not so far that the 49th State was spared the devastating effects of COVID-19. As the year progressed, COVID-19 cases increased pretty steadily, causing often irreparable damage to lives and livelihoods for people of all ages across every industry in the state—but in particular for the tourism and hospitality industries. Leisure and hospitality saw job losses of more than 33 percent from September 2019 to September 2020 (that’s some 13,600 fewer jobs than during the same time period last year). The transportation, warehousing, and utilities sector had 6,000 fewer jobs, mainly in scheduled air transportation and scenic and sightseeing transportation, according to an Alaskanomics report from late October. In any other year, Alaska is a bucket list destination for more than 2.5 million people. Tourists are welcomed with open arms to towns and villages statewide. But this year welcoming anyone with open arms proved to be difficult. And dangerous. At a time when most of us are confused and looking for answers where there are few to be found, a calm voice and careful, consistent messaging can be life-saving. Enter our cover model and Alaska’s Chief Medical Officer, Dr. Anne Zink. Since the pandemic reared its ugly head here in March, Zink has served as a stabilizing force, providing consistent messaging throughout: wash your hands, wear a mask, and practice social distancing. Seems simple enough on the surface, but helping the public—and its many, many personalities—understand why taking these steps is important requires a smart, soothing, tenacious touch. Zink and her team at the Department of Health and Social Services have worked tirelessly for nearly a year with the medical community, with municipalities, and with the public, all with the goal of stopping the spread of COVID-19. This month’s healthcare special section is dedicated to Zink and all of the healthcare workers who continue to fight this virus, day after day, week after week, never giving up even as cases continue to climb. The best way we can honor the people working so hard to protect and care for us is by following their advice: wash your hands often; keep your social bubble small, stay at least six feet away from those outside your bubble—and wear a mask.
danny@akbizmag.com
Art Director Monica Sterchi-Lowman 257-2916 design@akbizmag.com
Art Production Linda Shogren 257-2912 production@akbizmag.com
Photo Contributor Kerry Tasker
BUSINESS STAFF President Billie Martin VP & General Manager Jason Martin 257-2905 jason@akbizmag.com
VP Sales & Marketing Charles Bell 257-2909 cbell@akbizmag.com
Senior Account Manager Janis J. Plume 257-2917 janis@akbizmag.com
Advertising Account Manager Christine Merki 257-2911 cmerki@akbizmag.com
Accounting Manager Ana Lavagnino 257-2901 accounts@akbizmag.com
Customer Service Representative Emily Olsen 257-2914 emily@akbizmag.com
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Ask An Expert Tax planning strategies for 2021 By Tracy Barbour
T
his was a year for the Alaska business community unlike any other. Business strategies changed and funds were borrowed or granted from multiple sources, meaning traditional expenses and revenues will likely be more complex than last April at tax time—especially given the recent tax law changes. There will presumably be a shift in how businesses in different industries are expected to file their 2020 tax returns, and this will call for a rethinking of tax planning strategies. In 2018, Congress passed legislation that has had a significant effect on business taxes, and this legislation will continue to impact companies reporting their 2020 taxes, according to Soldotna-based certified public accountant Joseph Moore. “A lower corporate income tax rate of 21 percent and a 20 percent deduction for passthrough entities are the most notable components of the new tax law that will affect 2020 taxes,” says Moore, a principal of Altman, Rogers & Co., Alaska’s largest locally-owned CPA firm. “Also, 100 percent deduction of eligible equipment purchases is in play for the 2020 tax year.” 10 | December 2020
In addition, many small businesses took advantage of the Payroll Protection Program (PPP). The program loaned small businesses a factor of their historical payroll costs and, if used for eligible costs, the amount could be forgiven tax-free. However, details about the forgiveness of these loans, as well as the deductibility of the costs, are JOE MOORE still in flux. “It is Altman, Rogers & Co. hoped that action by Congress and the president will shed light on these issues soon,” Moore says in an early October interview. The forgiveness aspect of PPP loans is a crucial issue for businesses. The state of the current tax law is that any loan amounts forgiven are taxexempt, but the expenses paid with those proceeds are not deductible, according to Jim Meinel, CPA, who operates an Anchorage accounting firm. This effectively translates into the forgiven amount being taxable. “If the forgiveness occurs by December 31,
2020, companies will see their taxable income jump during the fourth quarter of 2020,” says Meinel. “Business owners should be working with their tax preparers to determine if their estimated tax payments should be adjusted. A key date is when the loan is legally forgiven as it is taxable income on that date. It is possible some forgiveness applications will not be processed until 2021, which would push that ‘income’ into the next tax year.”
Changes Impacting Net Operating Losses An important factor that will affect tax planning will be whether companies received any type of government assistance through the Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security (CARES) Act, says Chad Estes, a tax partner in the Anchorage office of BDO, which provides tax and financial advisory services worldwide. For instance, businesses that received funding through PPP, Economic Injury Disaster Loans (EIDL), or the AK Cares Grant Program will have certain reporting requirements when filing their 2020 tax forms.
Alaska Business www.akbizmag.com
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FINANCE
One important tax-law change businesses should be aware of relates to carrying back net operating losses (NOL) to obtain refunds of previously paid taxes. Under the CARES Act, taxpayers may use a five-year carryback for NOLs arising in tax years beginning in 2018, 2019, and 2020. Estes explains: “Before the Tax Cut and Jobs Act passed in 2017, you were able to carry the losses back two years and forward twenty; then it changed CHAD ESTES to only forward BDO with no expiration, with the deduction limited to 80 percent of taxable income. The CARES Act suspended that for 2020 and retroactively for 2018 and 2019. If a business had a net operating loss in 2018, 2019, or 2020, it can carry that loss back—assuming it paid taxes—and possibly get some of that tax back.” Having the ability to recoup previously paid tax represents a significant opportunity, according to Meinel. “This can be a great tax saver as the marginal income tax rates five years ago were substantially higher than the current rates,” he says. “The current greater depreciation deductions increase this opportunity.”
“Taxpayers should continue to monitor legislative developments as a result of the ongoing COVID-19 health crisis, the presidential and congressional elections, and the overall state of the US and global economies.” Alex Rasskazov, Tax Managing Director, KPMG
Other Important Deductions Another major tax-related adjustment involves the CARES Act’s correction of a “retail glitch” associated with qualified improvement property. The act includes a technical correction to the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act concerning the way the cost of certain improvements to an existing nonresidential building is recovered. In a nutshell, the glitch mistakenly defined qualified improvement property as 39-year property rather than 15year property, as originally intended. Because of this, taxpayers were prevented from taking advantage of 100 percent bonus depreciation for improvements made to an interior part of a building and instead had to depreciate those improvements over 39 years. “If somebody made $50,000 of interior renovations to their restaurant, they would have had to capitalize and depreciate it over 39 www.akbizmag.com
Alaska Business
December 2020 | 11
years,” Estes says. “Now they can take bonus depreciation in 2020.” Essentially, the CARES Act corrected the error retroactively to January 1, 2018. As a result, property owners can save tax dollars by either amending their 2018 and 2019 tax returns or by filing an automatic consent Form 3115 to catch up on tax depreciation. In addition, taxpayers who own nonresidential real estate used in their own businesses or who are landlords may review their 2018 and 2019 tax returns to determine whether to file an amendment or an automatic consent Form 3115 to take advantage of bonus depreciation opportunities. Also, as part of their 2020 taxes, businesses will be able to deduct different types of expenses because of the COVID-19 pandemic. Tax deductions will still need to be “ordinary” and “necessary” to be an allowed business deduction; however, in a pandemic, what is considered ordinary and necessary has changed for some businesses, Estes says. “The same rules are there, but I think it’s pretty safe to say that mass quantities of hand sanitizers, masks, and cleaning bills for sanitation are now considered ordinary and necessary, unfortunately,” he says. “There are probably other expenses, such as additional consulting fees around human resources and accounting fees for assistance with PPP loans or payroll tax credits, which are things some businesses never would have had to deal with before.” While many expenses related to dealing with COVID-19 are deductible as ordinary and necessary business costs, it’s a different situation for employees. As Meinel points out, one current issue involves the expenses incurred if their employer sets them up to work from home but does not reimburse all the associated JIM MEINEL expenses. “Recent Jim Meinel tax law changes had made these types of unreimbursed expenses nondeductible by the employee on their personal tax return,” he says. “There is some sentiment in Congress to change that.” 12 | December 2020
Another tax law change relates to expanding the number of construction companies that can report income differently for tax reporting purposes than for their general-use financial statements. Previously, businesses with gross receipts under $10 million could use the cash method to report taxable income to the IRS, says Meinel, whose practice caters to commercial construction companies. “That limit is now $26 million, which means more companies are eligible to change from the accrual method to the cash method for income tax reporting and increase the chances of deferring their taxes each year,” he says.
Monitoring Crucial Legislation According to tax experts, legislation is a principle area business owners should consider when developing their 2020 tax planning strategies. They should focus on the ongoing legislation that has already been enacted, along with any legislative proposals that are currently being considered in response to COVID-19. Currently, there are several applicable tax proposals and bills that are in various stages of the legislative process in response to the ongoing impact of COVID-19, according to Alex Rasskazov, tax managing director ALEX RASSKAZOV in the Anchorage KPMG office of KPMG, a global audit, tax, and advisory services firm. A multitude of scenarios around potential changes also exist, depending on the outcome of the presidential and congressional elections. “Taxpayers should continue to monitor legislative developments as a result of the ongoing COVID-19 health crisis, the presidential and congressional elections, and the overall state of the US and global economies,” Rasskazov says. KPMG Anchorage Tax Practice Leader Julie Schrecengost also advocates focusing on the COVID-19-related legislative changes passed this year. In addition to the expanded rules around NOLs, new opportunities for filing refund claims, and deferral of payment of payroll taxes, key legislation also includes the introduction of paid leave
provisions and various payroll tax credits for certain businesses, expanded rules around interest expense disallowance, and many other items. “Businesses should consider these impacts on income tax reporting, payroll tax reporting, and their general dayto-day operations,” JULIE SCHRECENGOST KPMG she says. Schrecengost also says that, under certain circumstances, companies may be able to take advantage of disaster loss provisions due to the pandemic. Additionally, businesses that issue financial statements in accordance with generally accepted accounting principles may need to consider how the tax legislation passed during 2020 will impact their financial reporting. Another ongoing tax issue resulting from recent legislative changes is companies’ ability to write off 100 percent of their equipment purchases. Prior to recent years, there were various statutory limitations sometimes preventing a full deduction, according to Meinel. “While in the short term this is a good thing, the disadvantage is that in future years there are no depreciation deductions left to take (unless you keep buying equipment), so the taxable income you deferred is right back at your doorstep the next tax period,” Meinel says. “In essence, this legislation turned equipment purchases into a mini tax shelter.” The political landscape is another unknown, according to Meinel. As of early October, political items potentially on the table included eliminating the 20 percent qualified business income deduction, a higher capital gains tax rate, adding types of income subject to Social Security taxes (12.4 percent), higher corporate income tax rates, and various limitations on itemized deductions. “Having a tax advisor plugged into these developments will at least provide the business owner with a heads-up on what may be developing,” he says.
Tax Planning for 2021 In terms of year-end tax planning strategies for 2021, Meinel says it is important for business owners
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“Before the Tax Cut and Jobs Act passed in 2017, you were able to carry the losses back two years and forward twenty; then it changed to only forward with no expiration, with the deduction limited to 80 percent of taxable income. The CARES Act suspended that for 2020 and retroactively for 2018 and 2019. If a business had a net operating loss in 2018, 2019, or 2020, it can carry that loss back—assuming it paid taxes—and possibly get some of that tax back.” Chad Estes, Tax Partner, BDO
14 | December 2020
to consider the big picture. Their priority can change from year to year, whether it’s lowering taxes, strengthening the financial statement, succession planning, paying down debt, or staying in business. “But I would say that for 2021, for most businesses, it is maintaining the integrity of the core business of the company and protecting and retaining its employees,” he says. “Naturally, I will advise our clients on the usual taxdeferral strategies, but for now, I feel the more important considerations are things like retaining cash, monitoring debt levels, and taking a hard look at overhead expenses. This is the fourth economic downturn I’ve experienced with my Alaska contractors, and when these areas are attended to, it keeps the company alive to fight another day.” Moore advises business owners plan for the best but prepare for the worst when it comes to formulating tax strategies. “Be conservative with projections and budgeting,” he says. “Cash is king. No one really knows what the future holds.” And Rasskazov offers this general tax planning advice for 2021: “Businesses should consult their tax advisor to evaluate the numerous tax planning opportunities available for accounting method changes and elections.”
Employing Tax Experts and Other Resources Given the business complexities of 2020, tax experts say companies would be well advised to consult with a tax or financial advisor. This is especially true for those that have taken any sort of government assistance, whether it’s a PPP loan, AK Cares Grant, or municipal grant, says Estes, whose firm serves a variety of industries. “2020 has been a wild year,” he says. “I think everybody has had their business impacted this year in some manner. Don’t be afraid to ask for assistance.” Rasskazov agrees. It’s challenging to navigate new tax laws and the specific details applicable to each individual situation, he says. “There are many ongoing developments and clarifications issued by the IRS that occur on a daily basis, and the IRS and Treasury have published thousands of pages of new regulations this year
related to the ongoing implementation of the tax reform legislation enacted at the end of 2017,” he says. Moore points out that the uncertainty about future tax legislation, the presidential election, and the outcome of the pandemic make for difficult tax planning. In addition, there are many new policies and tax legislation as a result of COVID-19—and more are likely to come. He says: “With unemployment at historic highs, current and future legislation will most certainly be tailored to reduce job losses and shore up revenues… Together, businesses and the tax professional can navigate these unprecedented times.” Most companies already have a tax professional preparing their business and personal tax filings. But if not, Meinel says, now would be an excellent time to get one on board. “Alaska’s economic business cycles can be extreme for certain industries, and the COVID-19 logistical challenges, along with the political responses to it, make it that much harder on the Alaska business owner,” he says. “Having a tax professional experienced in advising clients in their specific industry will be an invaluable addition to the business’ team of advisors to achieve the owner’s business and personal goals.” In addition to consulting with tax and financial advisory firms, business owners can take advantage of other resources to support their tax planning efforts. For instance, it can be helpful to have an accounting program with a chart of accounts tailored to the company’s particular industry as well as properly trained office staff to process and record the company’s transactions. Government and industry websites can also be invaluable resources. For example, the Small Business Administration website provides extensive details about the EIDL and PPP programs. The Small Business Development Center website offers information about the AK Cares program. IRS.gov, of course, contains a plethora of tax-related and general information for businesses. In addition, the Alaska Society of CPAs offers a CPA referral database at www.akcpa.org. Users may search the Find-A-CPA Directory by city, size of practice, specialization, and industry expertise to find an accountant that matches their specific needs.
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E N V I R O N M E N TA L
Waste Management in Rural Alaska Building waste management systems for healthier communities
Brian Adams
By Isaac Stone Simonelli
16 | December 2020
Alaska Business www.akbizmag.com
T
he rapidly warming climate is having negative impacts on rural communities in Alaska, where there are already significant barriers to creating the necessary infrastructure for solid waste and sewage management. “Negative ‘norms’ have been occurring over decades in communities that still struggle with lack of basic sanitation services [in more than thirty villages in Alaska],” explains Jackie Qataliña Schaeffer, the senior project manager of Alaska Native Tribal Health Consortium’s (ANTHC) Division of Environmental Health and Engineering. “The impacts of climate change only compound the inadequate housing, aging infrastructure, and lack of basic services, which in turn affects all aspects of human health in indigenous communities.” According to ANTHC Director of Community Environmental Health Michael Brubaker, “In many communities, changes in the land caused by thawing or flooding has resulted in impacts to critical infrastructure, such as foundations,
An Ahtna crew backfills around a 1,000 gallon insulated septic tank on the ANTHC Koyukuk sewer and water project. Ahtna Environmental, Inc.
containment walls, fences, pipelines, and roads. This results in damage and disruptions of service and in some cases breaches and spills. “Extreme rain events can cause ponds and other containments to
flood. There are also upstream impacts such as a longer season when the liquid waste is not frozen, and thus more likely to spill, or mid-winter warm spells which can cause stored waste to thaw, leak, or spill. In some cases,
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December 2020 | 17
The distances that folks need to travel ... to get a jug of water, it’s pretty far. So having water in the house is just going to be an astronomical increase in the quality of life.” Andy DuComb Environmental Engineer, Ahtna Environmental
communities are having to abandon or relocate waste disposal facilities.”
Newtok Changing shorelines in places such as Newtok only accentuate the problems surrounding harsh weather conditions and rugged terrain that are already obstacles to developing waste systems.
A newly installed bathroom on the ANTHC Levelock sewer and water project. Ahtna Environmental, Inc.
“Because the riverbanks are eroding and sloughing off into the water, it's making it difficult to land a barge there,” Ahtna Global Director of Construction Ronald DesGranges says. “Getting equipment in there and containers to package the waste is difficult.” In October, DesGranges’ team finished staging a Newtok project to remove solid waste from the site as
the village continues preparations to relocate to Mertarvik. Since 1994, residents of Newtok have been working toward leaving the slowmoving disaster zone—dozens of feet of the community’s shoreline are being lost every year to erosion. DesGranges says his team has already demolished several structures in the community that were hanging over the bank into
Why I Do What I Do Business” in the subject line. Or open the one labeled “Alaska Business 2021 Media Kit Attached.”
O
By Janis Plume Senior Account Manager
kay, I get it. You are busy. You own a business and your days are filled with serving your customers; striving to keep them happy and coming back. You’re hard at work making sure your employees are productive and happy, and, of course, you’re focused on the bottom line. Where’s the time to even think about advertising? First, take time to read that email from me— the one with something like “Advertising Opportunity in Alaska
In my work at Alaska Business I get to have day-to-day connections with business people and help them with advertising solutions. We offer advertising solutions in Alaska’s premier monthly business publication (print and digital), in our weekly Alaska Business Monitor newsletter, and on our website — it’s all in that media kit! My ego isn’t so inflated that I think I’m a one man show. I couldn’t get this job done without a great team. Talented designers that make us look good and the clients look great. A management team ready with good, orderly direction and access to information to help me work smarter. Rounding it out is a great editorial team hard at work researching, interviewing, and writing useful local business insights.
A look at any issue of Alaska Business will prove that. If you haven’t answered my calls or replied to my emails you may be asking, “Why does he do this?” Simple answer… I like to help businesses succeed! The next time you see an email from janis@akbizmag.com or get a call from (907) 257-2917, consider taking a minute to respond. It might lead to an opportunity to invest in and grow your business through a beneficial change in your marketing strategy.
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18 | December 2020
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Ahtna Environmental, Inc. Ahtna Environmental, Inc.
Ahtna Environmental drills a well for the ANTHC Koyukuk sewer and water project. ANTHC
the Ningliq River. Though they were able to identify places to land barges to get equipment onshore, wet conditions forced the team to halt work until early next year. “We're going to go back in February when everything's frozen, and we can walk around out there… and be able to clean up the landfill with our
excavator and load those containers with the refuse and white goods [sinks, refrigerators, and similar items] that they have out there,” DesGranges says. Even before the erosion issues, there were a few roadblocks to implementing an effective waste management system in Newtok. One is a lack of clean fill to bury refuse as part of a landfill system.
For decades, Newtok has gone without infrastructure development as resources were allocated to other rural communities that weren’t under the threat of being washed away by climate change. However, in 2019 a Class III Landfill was constructed near Mertarvik. The landfill stores all types of solid waste, including household garbage and dried
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A drill rig is used to put in a well for the ANTHC Koyukuk sewer and water project completed by Ahtna Environmental. Ahtna Environmental, Inc.
“With no back-haul systems for waste in place, the current system can be impacted by climate events that can cause cross-contamination to the surrounding healthy ecosystems. This in turn could create a negative ripple effect. Location of these waste management systems are being closely considered when communities relocate due to climate change impacts to help mitigate the risks to human health.” Jackie Qataliña Schaeffer, Senior Project Manager of Alaska, ANTHC
human waste from the separating toilets in the community, says Schaeffer of ANTHC. “I flew over the landfill area, and it looks completely legit, as far as any landfill I’ve seen,” DesGranges says. “It's just as good as Bethel or anywhere else that has an organized structure.” But waste at the Newtok site still needs to be addressed; with the community moving to Mertarvik, the Ahtna team is responsible for removing refuse from Newtok, placing it in metal shipping containers, and transporting it to Seattle for processing. An in-house industrial hygienist for Ahtna will conduct a hazardous waste survey for the team to determine what kind of waste is present and how it needs to be handled, DesGranges says.
Levelock Ahtna subsidiary Ahtna Engineering is upgrading and implementing systems in Levelock. “At Levelock, Ahtna Engineering supplied and installed wells, septic systems, arctic water service, filtration and treatment systems, water heaters, and framed raised floors and interior walls for ten residences in the Bristol Bay region of Alaska,” Ahtna Environmental Senior Business Development and Marketing Group Manager Lori Kropidlowski explains. 20 | December 2020
“Ahtna worked on-site with local community members to bring sustainable running water and sanitary systems to residences, some of which previously had none,” Kropidlowski says. Access to clean water, which is often connected to a community's ability to safely dispose of waste, is crucial. Schaeffer gives the example of human waste left outside homes to freeze in plastic bags during the winter months. In cases where these bags are damaged prior to spring thaw, the waste can leak out of the bag and seep into the ground. The contaminants can then end up in ground water systems, spreading throughout the community and into structures. ANTHC has installed separating toilet systems to mitigate this risk. But the benefits of access to clean water go beyond just sanitation. “Water is needed for many purposes, including drinking, cooking, cleaning, and personal hygiene,” says Meda Snyder, CDT project manager for ANTHC’s Department of Environmental Health and Engineering. Snyder notes that various health studies and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reports point toward water quantity and quality being a critical factor in the health of rural Alaska villages. The goal with these infrastructure projects is to increase access to
clean water for the entire community, Snyder says. “If they're not put into place, what we will expect to see is increased healthcare costs with the aging infrastructure.” Snyder says there are many elements that must be considered when designing projects in rural Alaska. Designing around aging infrastructure, costs related to ongoing maintenance for the community, nontraditional home design, and thawing permafrost are just a few aspects that must be thought about during the initial planning phases. “Those are some of the challenges that we take into consideration with the communities in moving forward from kind of a preliminary engineering to design and construction,” Snyder says.
Koyukuk Last year, Ahtna Environmental also finished a $2.4 million project that brought sustainable running water and sanitary systems to Koyukuk residents who previously had to haul water, use honey buckets, and commute to the local washateria, Kropidlowski says. “Aside from just the outhouse use, some of the distances that folks need to travel—specifically in Koyukuk—to the washateria to get a jug of water, it’s pretty far,” says Andy DuComb, an environmental engineer at Ahtna
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Environmental. DuComb says that for older residents the trek to the washateria in the winter can be especially tough. “Having water in the house is just going to be an astronomical increase in the quality of life,” DuComb says. He adds that in both Koyukuk and Levelock there were the additional challenges of limited information about existing utilities, mandatory sanitary offsets, and remote conditions. “Ahtna worked on-site with local shareholders to minimize the disturbance of construction and new infrastructure on residents and to optimize the productivity of the systems,” DuComb says. “Each well was drilled to a depth of approximately two hundred feet and through permafrost.” Permafrost was one of the many construction obstacles overcome during the project, says Daniel Caldwell, senior construction project manager for Ahtna Infrastructure & Technologies. “If there’s permafrost, ADEC requires a separation of 6 feet between impermeable layers and the drain field,” Caldwell explains. Caldwell says the permafrost at the site is discontinuous. Just 10 to 15 feet away from where soil samples were taken by the design team, Ahtna would go to install a system but would run into permafrost. “Then, we had to do a design change on the fly and change the system out in the field,” he says. The permafrost levels at Koyukuk prevented the team from leveling the site, which interfered with the installation of a gravity-fed system. Instead, they needed to build a pressure-mound system. A typical sewage system allows gravity to move waste from the home into a tank and then out of the tank to a drain field. In a pressure-mound system, the fluids are still moved down into the tank by gravity but are then pumped uphill to the drainage field.
One Size Does Not Fit All Logistics are another hurdle facing those concerned with infrastructure in rural Alaska. “In Western Alaska and up and down the Ningliq and the Yukon, that's what it’s all about; the majority of the cost is the logistics, getting in and out,” DesGranges says. www.akbizmag.com
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“In many communities, changes in the land caused by thawing or flooding has resulted in impacts to critical infrastructure, such as foundations, containment walls, fences, pipelines, and roads. This results in damage and disruptions of service and in some cases breaches and spills.”
change impacts to help mitigate the risks to human health.” For Native communities, the impact of climate change goes beyond physical health, Schaeffer says. “With climate impacts more frequent and unpredictable, rural communities are seeing a disruption in all aspects of health,” she says. There is a mental toll on communities that are unable to carry on traditional celebrations due to lack of subsisted foods, a physical toll due to barriers to traditional hunting practices, as well as a spiritual toll. The needs of each village in rural Alaska vary, so it naturally follows that the right solution for each location does as well. “It's really dependent on each village and their differing geography, water quality, population, and permafrost. This isn’t an exhaustive list but some of the challenges ANTHC faces when designing and constructing rural Alaska water and sewer projects," Snyder says. Whether relocation or upgrading existing infrastructure is the right choice for a community depends on a multitude of factors. For communities such as Newtok, which is quickly eroding off the Alaska coast, relocating to a thoughtfully designed and developed new village was the only practical solution. For others, such as Koyukuk and Levelock, investing in waste disposal systems and clean water in their current village best serves the community. Brian Adams
Michael Brubaker Director of Community Environmental Health ANTHC
“We've just gotten so good at the logistics. It's not about us having our own barge or anything like that, it's about knowing who is where and what freight is going upriver for what job and capitalizing on those situations.” Though the projects come with hefty price tags, like most infrastructure development projects, they are important steps toward securing communities. But it’s about more than individual communities, says ANTHC’s Schaeffer. “When negative habits are formed over time, human behavior changes and those negative habits are compounded. With no backhaul systems for waste in place, the current system can be impacted by climate events that can cause crosscontamination to surrounding healthy ecosystems,” Schaeffer says. “This in turn could create a negative ripple effect. Location of these waste management systems are being closely considered when communities relocate due to climate
22 | December 2020
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TOURISM
Tourism Takeaways Insights into 2020 and beyond from visitor bureaus around the state
Sherman Hogue | Explore Fairbanks
By Tracy Barbour
24 | December 2020
Alaska Business www.akbizmag.com
T
his year has been devastating for Alaska’s tourism sector, which experienced a slump in visitor numbers, substantial revenue losses, and other impacts dispensed by the COVID-19 pandemic. But what does that mean for the future of the state’s visitor industry? To address this and other important questions, visitor bureaus statewide shared their insights on Alaska’s tourism sector. The Alaska Travel Industry Association (ATIA) is hopeful about tourism's prospects for 2021. Improvements in rapid testing capability—and hopefully a vaccine—will go a long way toward supporting prospective travelers' decisions to visit Alaska, says ATIA President and CEO Sarah Leonard. “ATIA has also developed industry protocols for safe business operations for tourism businesses and is promoting Alaska's wide-open spaces as a safe travel destination,” she says. “While funding is limited, ATIA will continue to keep Alaska's brand in the travel marketplace to encourage potential travelers to keep Alaska top of mind.” According to Leonard, 2020 was supposed to be a record year for tourism in Alaska, building upon 2019's more than 2.25 million visitors. The pandemic, however, brutally interrupted that trajectory. “While we will not see record numbers in the near future,” she says, “we hope to reach comparable numbers within the next two to three years.” In typical years, Alaska's tourism industry contributes more than $4 billion in economic activity to the state, Leonard says. That includes more than $100 million in visitor-generated revenue to the state and more than $88 million to local and borough budgets. “With 99.9 percent of cruise ship sailings cancelled in Alaska, that revenue wasn't captured this summer,” she says. This spring and summer, ATIA ran informal industry surveys in which more than 85 percent of respondents anticipated losing more than 50 percent of their revenue in 2020. Cash flow has been a huge issue, especially when many businesses take deposits months in advance, Leonard says. She adds, “Some of our industry businesses were able to use CARES Act and other federal and state funding to cover essential costs this year.” www.akbizmag.com
This summer Alaskans stepped up to support local businesses, such as the vendors at the Tanana Valley Farmers Market in Fairbanks, which have been hard-hit by a lack of travelers. Bill Wright | Explore Fairbanks
Leonard has learned several key take-aways from dealing with the pandemic’s impact. For example, the pandemic underscored that Alaska is in a challenging position when it comes to attracting visitors. She explains: “We're a longhaul destination, so we don't have the benefits of other states when it comes to short driving vacations SARAH LEONARD and travel across ATIA state lines. Our industry is dependent on cruise and air for visitor travel [60 percent of visitors travel by cruise ship and 36 percent by air].” She adds: “As we look forward to the return of travel, tourism businesses will place an even greater emphasis on health, safety, and sustainable operations. People in the tourism industry are also amazingly resilient and entrepreneurial, and I'm already hearing about businesses developing new attractions, activities, and processes to promote safe travel.” ATIA has implemented various initiatives to navigate the daunting landscape etched by the pandemic. For example, working with regional Alaska Business
and local destination marketing organizations across the state and with the support of GCI, Alaska Airlines, ACS, the Alaska Railroad, and others, ATIA launched a “Show Up for Alaska” campaign to support in-state visitation to local tourism businesses. Explaining the significance of this effort, Leonard says, “By encouraging Alaskans to explore our own backyard, we were able to support local businesses as well as the communities that rely on taxes and user fees to support local budgets.” The association will continue focusing on its mission to support its industry and promote Alaska as a premier travel destination. “While marketing funding will be tight this year, we will continue to promote our industry protocols for safe operations— and Alaska's wild lands and open spaces as a safe travel destination. We are finding visitors want smallgroup, personalized experiences, and our businesses are developing new ways to support social distancing, enhanced cleaning methods, and other safety precautions as part of that effort. Travel and tourism will look different, but people still want to visit Alaska,” says Leonard. ATIA is also working to mitigate the "lost season" of summer 2020. As such, the association is encouraging December 2020 | 25
“As we look forward to the return of travel, tourism businesses will place an even greater emphasis on health, safety, and sustainable operations. People in the tourism industry are also amazingly resilient and entrepreneurial, and I'm already hearing about businesses developing new attractions, activities, and processes to promote safe travel.” Sarah Leonard, President/CEO, ATIA
businesses and organizations, from small mom-and-pops to larger members, to be flexible and continue to adapt their operations for this winter’s and into next summer’s travel seasons. “Recovering from the summer of 2020 will probably not happen in one year,” Leonard says. “Businesses should plan and look out to 2021, 2022, and beyond to recover.”
Visit Anchorage's Insights Visit Anchorage President and CEO Julie Saupe recognizes there’s a great deal of uncertainty about 2021 and the visitor industry. There are many 26 | December 2020
questions that no one has an answer for, and tourism in Alaska next year and beyond relies in part on developments that are far beyond anyone’s control, she says. However, she maintains: “There's a great deal to be done to preserve our place in the minds of future travelers, protect our businesses and community from adverse effects of the pandemic, and promote the destination before the new types of traveler that will emerge on the other side of all this. The recovery is still to start, and it is likely to take several years to climb back to our former heights once things do begin to rebound. It's up to us to lay the groundwork now to ensure we bounce back better.” In terms of the pandemic’s financial impact, the anecdotal news is dire. “We’ve heard that many Anchorage businesses report that they saw only a slim fraction of what they would normally see. Some report only 10 percent to 20 percent of what their regular business would be for summer 2020. That's eye-opening,” Saupe says. She adds: “Through August, hotel revenue in Anchorage was down about 60 percent compared to 2019. The effects of the pandemic are widereaching and ongoing. This is only a partial accounting of likely losses in tourism and in the wider community.” In its own effort to mitigate some of the pandemic’s negative effects, Visit Anchorage plans to put $3.3 million into promotion for Anchorage in the year ahead. That's about 60 percent of what was put into the market prepandemic. “Sharp, often painful cuts at the outset are going to keep us in a place to get the best returns, given the circumstance,” Saupe says. The pandemic has indeed been an eye-opener for Saupe. Sharing her three big lessons, she says: “First, I think we all have a wider understanding of just how central travel and tourism JULIE SAUPE is to Anchorage's Visit Anchorage bottom line. No sector is spared, but we see now what tourism brings to our communities in terms of financial gains and
employment. Visitation also contributes to a feel in the community in more intangible ways—when people are visiting, there's more activity in shops, restaurants, and on sidewalks, and a bustle that I have missed.” She continues: “Second, content and engagement are key. Even when people can't visit, keeping us top-ofmind is vital. Despite the conditions of the moment, we have to inspire curiosity, spark a passion to visit, so when the time is right again, we're still at the top of their list. Finally, amid big, global challenges, no one should go it alone. We have to be there for one another supporting the people who make up our community.” Visit Anchorage, like its counterparts, has engaged in various initiatives to ride out the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic. As visitation from outside Alaska dialed down in spring 2020, Visit Anchorage turned its focus to fielding local/in-state campaigns. “The support of locals has been critical for Alaska businesses,” Saupe says. “But with Alaska's relatively small population, these only can reach a fraction of the people our efforts would typically connect with through national campaigns.” As part of these efforts, Visit Anchorage ramped up its content creation and curation. This entailed reinforcing its photo and video libraries, along with putting together new articles, stories, and posts tailored to future visitation or incorporating health and safety best practices. For example, there were articles suggesting reading lists and recipes from Alaska anyone could enjoy at home as well as a virtual tour of Anchorage on Instagram, with stops chosen by vote. “Apart from that, we preserved promotions budget by severely reducing and controlling costs,” Saupe says. “Unfortunately, that included staff furloughs and layoffs. It also meant eliminating all but the most cost-effective means of marketing. Often these latter cuts were decisions made for us, for example, as tradeshows were cancelled or postponed by their organizers.” Visit Anchorage plans to take a measured approach to introducing new programs and campaigns to bring in would-be visitors. There is no crystal
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Tour operators have developed new cleaning and distancing protocols to ensure their activities are as safe as possible, though many Alaska tourism activities are already conducted in small groups and take place outdoors, like rafting on the Matanuska River. Ashley Heimbigner | Visit Anchorage
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Alaska Business
December 2020 | 27
“Because of the continued border closures, the uncertainty with the cruise industry, continued case counts, and consumer confidence at this time, we have taken a conservative approach with our 2021 estimates. We have estimated about a 52 percent decline from 2019 actuals.” Deb Hickok, President/CEO, Explore Fairbanks
ball, so the best approach is to be ready when the time is right, Saupe says. “I hope that we've managed to strike a delicate balance this year and for 2021,” she adds. Elaborating, she says: “On the one side, we've taken a clear-eyed and conservative approach to budgeting. That will keep our plans and programs in line with what we think can be expected. On the other side, we've sought to maximize the power and reach of our programs to ensure the best possible outcomes for our community and our industry. That's not too different from what we do in any year. But in a time like this, it is vital. As 2020 ends, we are fielding new research, further reinforcing photo and video assets, and working to improve Anchorage.net with better 28 | December 2020
functionality. These will adapt us for new traveler demands, remarketing our city to the most likely traveler post-COVID, and supporting visitor businesses devastated by COVID.” Saupe says Visit Anchorage will continue to focus on engaging and inspiring independent travel, as it's likely to see green shoots first. That means investing in new digital tools to help sell and doubling down on online and social engagement. “We continue to connect with travel advisors and meeting planners, laying the groundwork for a future return of group sales, meetings, and conventions,” she says. At this juncture, Saupe is encouraging everyone to shop local and buy gift cards to tourism businesses for holiday shopping. She further urges people to “ join a tour; visit an attraction; support our arts and cultural institutions—it all helps friends and neighbors and keeps our community going.”
Explore Fairbanks' Views Consistent with her colleagues, Explore Fairbanks President and CEO Deb Hickok is predicting a slow recovery for Alaska’s tourism sector. A full recovery is dependent on a number of variables. This includes the lifting of travel restrictions, which will be influenced by the widespread availability of rapid testing and, eventually, a vaccine. “Consumer confidence in air and cruise travel is a key to the recovery of Alaska tourism,” she says. The estimated revenue losses for 2020 for the Fairbanks North Star Borough—which encompasses the cities of Fairbanks and North Pole—are stark. “We had originally estimated a 62 percent decrease for 2020, but we have seen numbers slightly higher than projected through August 2020; we are just below 57 percent net loss from the same DEB HICKOK time frame in Explore Fairbanks 2019,” Hickok says. Explore Fairbanks’ revenue numbers for the borough include a $3.6 million projected loss for 2020 from 2019 levels; a $2.6 million projected loss through August 2020 from 2019 levels;
and a $2.3 million actual loss through August 2020 from 2019 levels. Not surprisingly, Explore Fairbanks is taking a moderate stance with future revenue projections. “Because of the continued border closures, the uncertainty with the cruise industry, continued case counts, and consumer confidence at this time, we have taken a conservative approach with our 2021 estimates,” Hickok says. “We have estimated about a 52 percent decline from 2019 actuals.” She adds: “Explore Fairbanks’ projected hotel/motel tax revenue collections for the Fairbanks North Star Borough, including the cities of Fairbanks and North Pole, is $2,948,198, down $2,806,839 from the 2019 actual collections. We expect the decline to be greater early to mid2021 with increases later in the year as circumstances evolve and consumer confidence grows.” Hickok says continued federal assistance for the hard-hit travel industry is imperative to keep businesses afloat and destinations marketing. And Explore Fairbanks is working to keep its business partners informed about CARES Act funding programs. “I have a sign on my desk that says, ‘Ensure that you have exhausted every option to secure stimulus funding.’ Personally, I’m like a dog on a bone to secure funding for the organization.” Like many visitor bureaus, Explore Fairbanks has taken active steps to respond to the pandemic. In April, the organization made the decision to cut staff and implemented acrossthe-board salary cuts for remaining staff to ensure that it could continue marketing. “We firmly believe that we should continue marketing,” Hickok says. “We could have easily paid our staff and done nothing, but that’s not how we roll. That’s not what we are about. I think there is a recognition from our team because they responded by working harder than ever.” Also, in April, Explore Fairbanks developed a COVID-19 Remarketing Recovery Plan to maintain brand awareness. The goal is to reach travelers who hunkered down and are dreaming about travel and to retain market share when normal travel resumes. An equally important marketing objective for the organization is to
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motivate people to plan a visit now. So, in the spring and summer, Explore Fairbanks rolled out digital, publicity, and social media tactics to local audiences. “Most recently, we launched a national push for aurora season on August 20,” Hickok says. “The winter campaign is being developed.” Explore Fairbanks has also launched training platforms to domestic and international tour operators and travel advisors to arm them with destination information. “As normal travel resumes, they can hit the ground running in selling the region to their clients,” Hickok says. “We are also developing a similar training customized for meeting planners.” Historically, Explore Fairbanks has been recognized as an entrepreneurial organization, and this corporate culture was critical to proactively reacting to the pandemic, Hickok says. “The team demonstrated an admirable combination of thoughtfulness and flexibility that was required to address the enormous challenges. I am continually inspired by the positive attitudes of our board, business partners, and staff in the face of adversity.”
Travel Juneau's Reflections Liz Perry, president and CEO of Travel Juneau, markets Alaska’s capital city for conferences and non-cruise ship travelers. She predicts that Alaska will see far fewer visitors in 2021 and beyond. As a long-haul destination, Alaska’s tourism industry may require a market cycle to reach profitability. “This means that some business will have to pivot to new or different markets/ products, which many already have,” Perry says. Perry anticipates seeing much lower revenues, in general, from previous years both on the municipal support and earned-income sides. “We expect to lose 40 percent of our usual partner revenue and anticipate flat or reduced municipal support, which was reduced by 45 percent for FY21.” However, Perry emphasizes that making predictions or estimates about the 2021 season is tricky at best. “We’ve learned a lot about the illness over the last six months, but predicting numbers of visitors and related revenue is futile at this time, given the high level of uncertainty,” she says. “We do know that www.akbizmag.com
Photo by Jeremy Talbott
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“Through August, hotel revenue in Anchorage was down about 60 percent compared to 2019. The effects of the pandemic are wide-reaching and ongoing. This is only a partial accounting of likely losses in tourism and in the wider community.” Julie Saupe, President/CEO, Visit Anchorage
Aurora season began August 20. Explore Fairbanks is developing a winter campain to draw visitors to the Interior. Sherman Hogue | Explore Fairbanks
restarting needs to be slow, monitored, and with a lot of thought around safety from transmission.” Travel Juneau has undertaken various initiatives to weather the COVID-19 crisis. For instance, the organization immediately began cutting costs wherever possible, reducing or completely cutting professional development, operational costs, and some aspects of paid marketing. “This resulted in staff furloughs, alongside salary and benefit cuts,” Perry says. It also allowed its partners to make payments on their marketing packages and hosted a virtual travel fair since the annual live event was cancelled. “This brought our partners some additional cash they might not have had and reminded our communities to support these businesses if possible,” Perry says. New initiatives are also being launched to entice potential visitors— 30 | December 2020
and their spending power—back to Alaska. However, Perry says much depends on the comfort level of residents to open the state to visitors, which hinges on the number and rate LIZ PERRY of infections; the Travel Juneau availability of fast, reliable, and inexpensive testing; and the possibility of an effective vaccine. She adds: “Without those in place, Alaska can’t come close to a full reopening, nor should it. Our perspective is that our community’s health comes first. Setting our sights on next season and beyond, we’re launching a Juneau Cares campaign to align our visitor businesses in creating, communicating, and implementing safety protocols and mitigation plans and promoting that to prospective visitors.”
Perhaps the best way to lessen the blow of the "lost season" of summer 2020, Perry says, is to save as much cash as possible to roll over into the next fiscal year. “We also need to take care of ourselves over the winter; many of us are burned out and stressed out,” she says. The pandemic has taught Perry a number of important lessons. Citing an example, she says, “The high level of uncertainty with this illness, including testing for it and the lack of a reliable vaccine against it, means we cannot make predictions about when the state can fully reopen or what our visitor numbers will be in the future.” She also recognizes the importance of staying in constant communication with Travel Juneau’s member partners, even if it’s only to be a sounding board. “These businesses are the lifeblood of our communities, and they need to know we’re in their corner and doing what we can.”
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The Cloudy COVID-19 Economy After almost a year of the pandemic, the state's economic future remains murky By Isaac Stone Simonelli
T
hough its largest city lagged behind, Alaska as a whole saw modest job growth in 2019, marking an emergence from a recession that started in 2014. Economists were cautiously optimistic in their predictions for what 2020 would hold for the state's economy. What none of them saw coming— what nobody saw coming—was the COVID-19 pandemic and the crippling economic damage it would cause. “The entire world lost GDP, so here in Alaska it’s estimated that we lost about 7 percent of our GDP from 2019, or about $4 billion,” Governor Mike Dunleavy says. The pandemic also resulted in significant job loss. There were 37,600 fewer jobs in September 2020 than September 2019, says Mouhcine Guettabi, an associate professor of economics at the Institute of Social and Economic Research (ISER). On average, before the pandemic, there were about 930 unemployment insurance claims a week in Alaska. Since March 21, unemployment insurance claims jumped to an average of 8,000 a week. As of the week ending August 22, there were 29,146 continuing regular claims and another 11,375 Pandemic Unemployment Assistance claims, Guettabi explains. Bill Popp, president and CEO of the Anchorage Economic Development Corporation, expects about 11,000 of those jobs to be lost in Anchorage. Unlike the rest of the state, which saw marginal job growth, Anchorage ended 2019 down 400 jobs, Popp says. In the five years since the recession began, 32 | December 2020
Anchorage lost about 6,000 jobs, add to that the estimated 11,000 lost due to the pandemic and, “That means 17,000 jobs lost in the last six years. And that puts us back to 2001 employment levels,” Popp says. “We've basically lost about twenty years’ worth of job growth in the city of Anchorage.” That accounts for about 40 percent of state’s job losses, Popp notes.
Hardest Hit Industries Though nearly every industry has taken a hit during the pandemic, some have suffered more than others. “The big losers are the hospitality sector. And then, not far behind, there is retail trade,” Popp says. Healthcare, which had previously been a bright spot of economic growth in the state, was also hit by the pandemic. Despite what some might expect, healthcare employment did not go up, Popp says. In fact, there was about a 1,000 job decline in the industry in Anchorage this year. “Elective procedures have just dropped dramatically in Anchorage. People don't want to go to a hospital unless they absolutely have to,” Popp says. “And then, on top of that, the hospitals have to preserve resources to protect themselves to be able to take care of surges that come and go in a COVID pandemic.” Dunleavy notes that, as the country better understood COVID-19, there was an increase in elective surgeries toward the end of the year. “We're somewhat in the same situation that the other states are and other countries are in terms of their
economies and their healthcare,” Dunleavy says. “The focus is on the virus and making sure that we have the capacity but, at the same time, also addressing the everyday events that occur in the everyday lives of folks... that find people ending up in the hospital.” The oil and gas industry, which remains a pillar of the state’s economy, was also not immune to the effects of the pandemic. Popp points out that the industry took heavy blows and faces a global outlook that leaves little room for optimism. In April, oil prices dropped into the negatives for the first time in history. By May, prices had stabilized but remained low. The fallout from the pandemic saw employment in Alaska’s oil and gas industry shrink by 1,700 jobs. “We're seeing lows in the oil and gas sector that we have not seen in quite some time,” Popp says. “We saw numbers like this back in 2004, which was a pretty bleak time.” The decline in prices affects state revenues, which has negative ramifications for the state budget gap, Guettabi says. The impacts of the pandemic on the economy were significantly compounded by the seasonal nature of Alaska’s industries from tourism and fishing to construction. As its residents know well, the state’s economy does not function uniformly throughout the year. Instead, there is a massive spike in economic activity and employment during the summer months. According to employment data for 2019, there were 35,369 more
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Small Business Support As of September, the Alaska Small Business Development Center had assisted more than 5,000 businesses and helped them raise about $43 million in new capital, Bittner says. Usually, the center works with 4,000 to 5,000 businesses in a full calendar year. The center has positioned itself as a one-stop shop for all things small www.akbizmag.com
business related, Bittner says. It helps owners find assistance and funding options to prevent their operations from going under due to the additional economic strain of the pandemic. “We were really active in the AK Cares program. We were very active in the SBA’s Paycheck Protection Program and the Emergency Injury Disaster Loan and disaster loan advance,” Bittner says. Both the PPP and Economic Injury Disaster Loans, which are direct business loans that can be converted into grants under specific conditions, accounted for a $1.5 billion injection into the state’s economy, Popp says. “Anchorage saw a lion's share of those loan dollars,” Popp says. “The other big piece of support for Alaska that directly affected Anchorage was the federal Pandemic Unemployment Assistance Program, which was the $600 per week unemployment assistance add on, on top of what the state was paying out.” While active, the Pandemic Unemployment Assistance Program provided $87 million a month to Alaskans, Popp notes. The program ended on July 25. At the state level, Popp praises the AK Cares program, which surpassed $130 million in approved grants for Alaska businesses by September. Though both federal and state programs were vital for many businesses' continued survival during the pandemic, they weren’t designed in a way that fit the needs of businesses operating in some key industries. In part, this was due to the need to rapidly launch the programs and get funds to businesses before they went out of business, Bittner says. “So, seasonal businesses, like tourism, like commercial fishing, kinda got left out or weren’t really good fits for many of the programs out there until very late in the game when they were able to make changes,” Bittner says. “And that was a real problem to an industry that was hurting pretty early on, and they weren't able to access a lot of funds until much, much later.”
What’s Our Economic Future? The pandemic isn’t over, nor is its influence on everyday life and economic opportunities; nevertheless Alaskans and economists are looking forward in an attempt to gauge what Wash your hands | Socially distance | Wear a mask
“We’re going to continue to protect our elders and our senior centers, and those that have underlying health conditions really need to be careful. But we’ve got to keep moving forward in terms of our economy… and balancing that with making sure that our healthcare capacity still stays in a zone that can handle an increase of cases.” Governor Mike Dunleavy
an economic recovery may look like for the state. Guettabi’s models show employment taking a positive turn by 2021; however, the state wouldn’t return to preCOVID-19 levels until 2023 or later. He expects the state to follow what is known as a k-shaped recovery, which is when different sectors of the economy recover at different times, rates, and magnitudes. Certain industries, such as tourism, are expected to take much longer to recover than other industries, such as fishing. Optimism about economic recovery in Alaska relies on a number of expectations built into the economic models. For Guettabi, this includes four primary assumptions. December 2020 | 33
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jobs in July than in January. The vast majority of them were directly connected to the fishing and leisure and hospitality industries. “Our seafood industry, we worked hard to save that,” Dunleavy says. “I think it’s actually a success story the way we handle that: worked with the industry, the processors, the fishermen to make sure that the workers coming in did not bring the virus to the population of Alaska and that was pretty successful. We did have a fishing season.” Nonetheless, it was an unprecedentedly difficult year for the seafood industry. Processors faced significant issues due to uncertainty, the need to minimize COVID-19 risks, and disruption in key markets for Alaska seafood on top of challenges unrelated to COVID-19, such as smaller returning fish. Though the Alaska seafood industry harvest numbers were not significantly impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic, there was a year-over-year decline in harvest value, according to a McKinley Research Group (formerly McDowell Group) report. Alaska Small Business Development Center Executive Director Jon Bittner says that the economic impact in Alaska would have been completely different if the pandemic had struck in late fall instead of in the spring. “It still would have been bad. But especially for commercial fishing, tourism, things like that, it happened right after they had secured a significant number of bookings and after they had expended a lot of money on setting up for those bookings but before any of the bookings actually arrived,” Bittner says. “So you had an almost unanimous slew of people asking for refunds after you've already spent the money to get ready for them. And there was no real recourse.”
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“None of this is easy. COVID-19 has definitely knocked us for a loop, and it's going to take a while for us to get our footing. But we think we're going to start to return to growth in 2021. And we think that there is opportunity in the future to get us back on track towards job growth. It's just a matter of us all coming together and saying we're gonna do this and making it happen.” Bill Popp, President/CEO Anchorage Economic Development Corporation
“First, the federal government will continue to provide financial assistance to unemployed individuals either by extending the unemployment insurance payments or by investing in work share programs. Second, I rely on the Alaska Department of Revenue’s forecast that shows oil prices will remain low but stable for the next two years,” Guettabi says. “Third, and perhaps most importantly, we assume that the virus will be contained and that the economy 34 | December 2020
will not experience another round of closures. Lastly, we assume a normalization of travel in 2021, which significantly affects the leisure and hospitality outlook.” Many states, including Alaska, are attempting to find the right balance between being open for business to promote economic growth and taking the necessary precautions to protect the population from COVID-19. “So we're going to continue to protect our elders and our senior centers, and those that have underlying health conditions really need to be careful,” Dunleavy says. “But we’ve got to keep moving forward in terms of our economy… and balancing that with making sure that our healthcare capacity still stays in a zone that can handle an increase of cases.”
'Dramatic Demographic Shift' ISER’s Director Ralph Townsend says that, though it’s important to understand how we can help the economy recover from the effects of the pandemic, officials and investors risk being too myopic. Townsend says he’s tried to get decision-makers to focus on how local demographics are changing and the significant impacts that’ll have on the economy. “Alaska is currently going through a rather dramatic demographic shift, which is going to have real implications for the future of Alaska and particularly to the size of our workforce,” Townsend says. Alaska is experiencing its longest stretch of net out-migration since statehood. As of 2012, more people have been leaving the state than coming to it; however, there was still growth in the population because there were enough new births to offset deaths and people leaving the state. That changed in 2017. The state’s population is now shrinking. Anchorage’s population peaked in 2013 at 301,000. By the end of 2023, the population will sink to 286,000, according to Popp’s projections. “That is not insubstantial, and that is the wrong direction. That is not a city that is growing, that has a vibrant economy,” Popp says. “And these are challenges that we face, that we need
to address in terms of how we get people to stay here.” Economists have identified three key elements to turning the migration pattern in the state around: retain retirees, retain Alaskans in the workforce, and find creative incentives to draw workers to Alaska from the Lower 48. “There's billions and billions of dollars in Alaska retirees’ retirement funds. Do we want them spending that here or do we want them spending that somewhere in the Lower 48?” Popp asks. “That's a huge transfer of wealth that's taking place. It’s the largest transfer of wealth between one generation and the next—which is basically the Baby Boomer generation’s transfer of wealth to the Millennial generation—that has ever been recorded in human history. It's trillions of dollars, getting ready to change hands over the next decade and a half, two decades.” Popp says the state must provide incentives to keep that wealth in the state to encourage investment in local businesses and industries. Of course, the value of the generation extends beyond the financials. “These are important people with great lessons to teach in terms of their experiences, and to lose that experience base just makes things that much harder for us to move forward when we don't have those who can warn us about not repeating the mistakes of the past,” Popp says. Along with holding onto Alaska’s retirees, the state must also attract skilled workers, something that is becoming increasingly difficult. Even prior to COVID-19’s arrival, there was a war for talent building and the pandemic has only made incentivizing potential workers harder as companies tighten their belts. Dunleavy says drawing a skilled workforce to Alaska from the Lower 48 requires crafting policies that increase the competitive edge industries have when operating in Alaska, creating jobs along the way. “I'm optimistic that the fundamentals of Alaska, unless they're changed through politics, are still there to ensure that we've got resources that are in demand, and that we can market those resources and move those resources.
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Alaska is known as the resource state—we'll continue to work that—but also it's going to be a transshipment state through international air cargo,” Dunleavy says, adding that there must be a sustained effort to make progress on the Alaska to Alberta Rail initiative. Known colloquially as A2A, the private project would lay 1,600 miles of railway to connect the Alaska Railroad with northern Alberta. While highlighting the need to keep energy costs down for industries, Dunleavy says a number of sectors in the state have growth potential, including initiatives to provide USmined rare earth elements to meet national demand. “[President Donald Trump’s] executive order on rare earth critical minerals that came out a week or two ago, I think bodes well for the state of Alaska,” Dunleavy says. “We’ve got thirty-three to thirty-five rare earths. We have a lot of critical minerals and strategic materials, such as commercial-grade graphite.” While Dunleavy is focused primarily on creating government policies that attract investment to Alaska, Popp points out that cities that are proactive on workforce quality of life issues are driving investment in the rest of the nation. “What we're finding is that companies are now following that workforce to those communities that are most successful in making investments,” Popp says. “Communities that are attracting that younger workforce, the next generation workforce, are seeing companies follow and make investments in the future of that city and the future of their companies.” Popp acknowledges that efforts to attract a more robust workforce will be delayed due to the pandemic, but he maintains that we cannot lose sight of what needs to be done to ensure the state’s long-term economic health. “None of this is easy. COVID-19 has definitely knocked us for a loop, and it's going to take a while for us to get our footing. But we think we're going to start to return to growth in 2021,” Popp says. “And we think that there is opportunity in the future to get us back on track towards job growth. It's just a matter of us all coming together and saying we're gonna do this and making it happen.”
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he novel coronavirus pandemic has demanded that healthcare professionals worldwide take a long, hard look at the way their systems are facilitating or hindering their ability to deliver care. For Alaska’s Chief Medical Officer, this period has been an exercise in making the most of the state’s available resources. When preparations were being made at the beginning of the year, Dr. Anne Zink was focused on two areas where Alaska appeared short-staffed. “I was particularly concerned about our ICU capacity: nurses, respiratory therapists, ICU doctors, and technicians in that space,” says Zink. “Early on in the pandemic, there was a big emphasis on intubating people quickly. There was a lot of talk about ventilators and the amount of supplies, and that really requires a very subspecialized group of personnel to make sure you can run those machines well.” Advanced technology requiring specialized care was the other area in which Zink felt Alaska was illequipped. Extracorporeal membrane oxygenation, or ECMO, is one example of a technology that has proved useful in combatting COVID-19 but which the state simply doesn’t possess the means to employ. A process like ECMO requires the expertise of cardiothoracic surgeons, which Zink says have proved difficult to attract. “You just can’t recruit people to work in the state to do that, and you need a whole team to be able to pull that off. Something like that is a 5- to 10-year process to build up.” Though valid, Zink’s initial concerns have only been a drop in the bucket of the many disruptions brought about by the virus. And almost a year into the pandemic, Alaska’s healthcare system continues to find new ways of responding and adapting.
What’s Worked, What Hasn’t, and What’s Next How Alaska’s healthcare system is adapting to this pandemic—and preparing for the next
What (and Who) Has Worked
Kerry Tasker
By Danny Kreilkamp
36 | December 2020
Alaska’s infrastructure and technology limitations have required its healthcare system to adopt new approaches to providing care. An increased role in telehealth, onboarding new healthcare workers via conferencing software, and old positions taking on new responsibilities—all part of the everchanging equation.
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A Group Effort But Providence, like many businesses, has been able to lean on a few strategic partnerships it has cultivated to help navigate the pandemic. www.akbizmag.com
The State of Alaska is one of those partners. Acquiring the necessary professional licenses to work legally in the state takes time. And with both the demand and the immediate need for nurses at an all-time high, measures have been taken to fasttrack some of these workers so that they are more readily available to serve on the frontlines.
“There is a huge need for data—the untold story of this pandemic is the fact that we’re at over half a million tests now, and most of those were coming to us via fax when this first started. And we’re not the only state. Most states are really struggling with this.” Dr. Anne Zink, Chief Medical Officer Alaska Department of Health and Social Services
In April, a joint effort between UAA and Alaska’s Board of Nursing offered seventy-two nursing students in good standing an opportunity to graduate a few weeks early. Many of the graduates had already fostered relationships with the hospitals through their time in clinicals, which contributed to a smooth transition for everyone involved. Wash your hands | Socially distance | Wear a mask
Alaska Executive Search (AES) is one of the state’s leading staffing agencies, and its relationship with Visit Healthcare—an emergency responsefocused testing company—is another example of companies taking a collaborative approach to problem solving. “We have worked closely with Visit Healthcare—they were able to set up testing sites for the municipality of Anchorage in record time with support from the CAN, CMA, data entry, and contact tracing candidates we provided them,” AES says. In addition to partnerships within the state, Zink says that for certain situations, Alaska has had to maintain close contact with hospitals in the Pacific Northwest. While Alaska doesn’t possess certain specialized care like ECMO, Zink explains the state does possess the ability to fly someone on a portable ECMO until they’re able to arrive in Seattle. “We’ve had to work closely with Seattle and be like, ‘Hey, you know you are part of our healthcare infrastructure, right? We need to make sure that your beds are available,’” she laughs.
What Hasn’t Certainly, some of the systems Alaska had in place prior to the pandemic, and those systems that have adjusted in response, have been successful. Others have not. “There is a huge need for data—the untold story of this pandemic is the fact that we’re at over half a million tests now, and most of those were coming to us via fax when this first started,” Zink admits. “And we’re not the only state. Most states are really struggling with this.” Zink says the healthcare community is spending a tremendous amount of time trying to make IT systems work together. “A lot of the time a community is focused on the positive of their contact tracing and they forgot to send it to us or fax it to us or call us—and we don’t have it, so we can’t put it up [on the dashboard]. “So, there’s all these bits and pieces of limitation that other countries who have a more unified healthcare system have not had to deal with.” A major issue facing patients and providers around the nation is the nature of siloed healthcare in the December 2020 | 37
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“I think there was a lot of focus initially on hospital capacity and alternative care sites, but as we’ve been able to slow this pandemic, it has required a whole different skill set,” says Zink. She points to the contact tracers, quarantine workers in rural communities, and other less celebrated positions that have played vital roles in the state’s response strategy. And in many cases, new positions are being created entirely to cater to a world in which face coverings and social distancing are the norm. Lisa Powell is Providence’s Director of HR for Alaska and Oregon. One development in particular that Powell has noticed is the emergence of hospital monitors. “If you’ve been into a clinic or hospital, someone may have stopped you and taken your temperature and asked you a few questions,” she says, noting that, in some cases, the individuals assuming these new roles aren’t necessarily required to possess healthcare backgrounds. “In some of our facilities, there are actually folks that monitor social distancing and folks that have to make sure we have enough PPE [personal protective equipment] on hand,” says Powell, adding that existing staff such as nurses and emergency coordinators have had to take on these additional duties. As far as attracting applicants to some of the more specialized positions, Providence’s Talent Acquisition Director, Robert Dick, echoes Zink’s earlier sentiments on the difficulties associated with recruiting. “Overall, Alaska is a challenging market to get people from the Lower 48 to relocate to… and it has certainly been more challenging adding the pandemic to the equation.” Doubling down on marketing campaigns has allowed Providence’s hiring efforts to remain steady, with sign-on bonuses also coming into play, Dick explains. “The psychology right now, with all the uncertainty in the market, makes people less compelled to leave a job.”
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“I think healthcare has been structured around the place, such as the hospital, rather than around the patient. We need systems that
put patients first—not systems that are meant for systems. What ways can we make this about patients and not about providers and places? If you’re in hospice, you could be at home and be able to have your doc FaceTime in and your doc doesn’t have to drive there—or you don’t have to die in the hospital.” Dr. Anne Zink, Chief Medical Officer, Alaska Department of Health and Social Services
United States. To illustrate this issue, Zink recalls the ravings of a frustrated professor during her residency who was unable to see lab results that were ordered in a different department of the same hospital. “And that is a good example of the fact that in most hospitals, inpatient can’t see what’s done in the emergency department, the emergency department can’t see what’s done in obstetrics, obstetrics can’t see what’s done in anesthesia— and that’s just within the hospital, let alone what was happening at the other hospitals or what happens in the clinic.” Part of the reason hospitals are unable to provide a seamless flow of information is due to individual departments each operating their own unique IT systems—IT systems that are incentivized to be proprietary. Electronic medical records or EMRs can be hugely helpful in providing continuity of care as patients are moved through specialties or from facility to facility, but that’s assuming a level of interoperability between
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What’s Next At the time of writing, Alaska had just recorded its fourth straight week of daily case-numbers in the triple digits. This alone suggests it will be some time before the pandemic begins to subside. And even when it does—what will come of the next pandemic? And how can the doctors, nurses, administrators, and clinics and hospitals of Alaska’s healthcare system better prepare themselves? For Zink , the answer is surprisingly simple.
“I think healthcare has been structured around the place, such as the hospital, rather than around the patient. We need systems that put patients first—not systems that are meant for systems. What ways can we make this about patients and not about providers and places? If you’re in hospice, you could be at home and be able to have your doc FaceTime in and your doc doesn’t have to drive there—or you don’t have to die in the hospital.” Expanding, she adds, “We need to invest in healthcare infrastructure that connects people and we need to invest in public health that’s community-focused. I think there’s been a movement in the healthcare realm for some time in Alaska about sharing information better and working more collaboratively, and I’m hoping we will take this moment to be able to really change the way that we do healthcare and have it be prevention-focused, patient-focused, and utilize the strengths of our communities to keep people healthy and well.”
As a roadmap for this approach, Zink points to the ef for ts of the Mat-Su communit y in tackling its opioid crisis. “I was just really amazed at when the public really engaged in opioid addiction and overdose in combination with the providers, patients, policymakers, and the press. It made a difference: we saw decreased deaths, decreased addiction, and we see real change when that happens.” Zink believes this approach would not only create a more resilient healthcare system but also a sturdier Alaska economy. “We have really unique limitations in the state—we don’t have ECMO, we don’t have certain services up here, it’s really hard to recruit healthcare providers. But what we do have is a really strong sense of community. And I think if we invest in prevention, we invest in public health and community strength, it will decrease our healthcare costs, make our businesses more robust, and our communities healthy.”
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disparate EMRs that has yet to come to fruition for many healthcare providers. And while there has been an effort by the federal government to address this issue, Zink believes this is like trying to fit square pegs in round holes. “The Health Information Exchange [HIE] is supposed to connect those pieces, but it’s essentially an air traffic controller with a bunch of parts and pieces that don’t want to fit together… And it’s part of the reason our healthcare costs are so expensive.”
Providence Health & Services Alaska
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W
Corralling COVID-19 Alaska sets a high bar for COVID-19 testing By Vanessa Orr
40 | December 2020
hen the COVID-19 pandemic first began, cities and states across the nation were scrambling for everything from information and general guidance to personal protective equipment and testing kits. As it continues to spread, more and more importance has been placed on testing as a way to both identify those with COVID-19 and to begin the contact tracing process. Despite its size and the fact that many cities and villages are in remote locations, Alaska has excelled at implementing a testing protocol and making it accessible to the public. There are 175 testing offices throughout the state—from single sites in villages such as Ninilchik, Elim, and Unalakleet to roughly two dozen sites within the city of Anchorage. Working together, everyone from the Department of Health & Social Services (DHSS) to municipalities, tribal health services, hospitals, and drug stores have stepped in to make sure that testing is easy and available to those who need it.
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Into the Fray While no one could have predicted how fast the virus would spread across the world and particularly across the nation, DHSS and its community partners geared up early to get testing sites operational. “In the very beginning, the state was the only entity that had tests; they received the tests from the CDC, and they did all of the specimen testing at their Fairbanks and Anchorage labs,” says Michael Bernstein, chief medical officer of Providence Health & Services Alaska. “Not long after, a number of commercial labs in the US developed their own tests, and we were able to get some of those at hospitals that had testing equipment. “Initially, the only way to get access to a test was to go to our emergency room, but we realized very quickly as we began seeing more people who needed tests that it was a very poor use of our ER,” he continues. “We were getting overwhelmed.” Providence, which is the largest healthcare provider in the state, was contacted by Dr. Anne Zink, DHSS’ chief medical officer, who asked about the feasibility of setting up a drive-through testing center on hospital-owned property that was not currently in use. “We quickly did some remodeling and established a drive-through, and for a period of time, we were the only drivethrough center,” says Bernstein, adding that the state then encouraged other areas to establish similar sites. “As far as organizing and funding, at first we did it ourselves. We had partnerships with Alaska Regional Hospital and Alaska Native Medical Center because they www.akbizmag.com
didn’t have testing sites yet, so they put a couple of their people permanently at our site to enter patient information into their own medical records.” Once the site became even busier, the municipality stepped in to help out. “After seeing the large public response to the testing site, the Municipality of Anchorage [MOA] put out an Invitation to Bid for more testing sites, which was awarded to Visit Healthcare,” says Gray, adding that MOA then began to focus on areas of town that were medically underserved.
“We are hypercareful of the process and protecting the workers, and with more than 32,000 tests at the Lake Otis location, not one caregiver has been found to have gotten COVID-19 from this station.” Caleb Terpstra, Supervisor, Lake Otis Testing Site
Anchorage is home to seven municipally funded COVID-19 testing sites and a DHSS site at the airport, as well as several privately owned testing sites within healthcare facilities. To create a testing site, Visit Healthcare uses a portable system, including a durable, all-weather tent, that can be set up and taken down each day and sanitized every night at the warehouse. With cold weather coming, testing staff will be housed in small, enclosed mobile buildings as well. “Visit Healthcare has a team of employees for each site, and they also maintain a mobile team that goes to Wash your hands | Socially distance | Wear a mask
shelters and assisted living homes,” says Gray. “The warehouse has a logistics manager, office staff, and there is a main lead for the Anchorage operations.” It takes a village to establish and run a test site—according to Gray, in Anchorage this includes the MOA for contracting, oversight, and some public information; the Alaska Public Health Laboratory and a laboratory in the Lower 48 for running tests; the Alaska State Epidemiology Office for reporting testing outcomes; MOA Traffic and Engineering for traffic patterns at the sites; and contractors who are doing the work.
How It Works According to the CDC, there are two types of tests available for COVID-19: viral tests, which tell individuals if they have a current infection, and antibody tests that tell them if they had a past infection. People who should get tested are those with symptoms of COVID-19; those who have had close contact (within 6 feet of an infected person for as little as 15 minutes in a 24-hour period) with someone confirmed to have COVID-19; and people who have been asked to or referred to get tested by healthcare providers or another health facility. According to Gray, anyone can be tested at MOA sites, a policy that has changed significantly since the beginning of the COVID-19 response. “Initially it was only symptomatic people, then it expanded to highrisk contacts of positive cases, and then to everyone who desired a test,” she says, adding that testing is not recommended after being ill with COVID-19 because the dead virus can continue to shed from the body for many months after recovery. To get tested, individuals need to pre-register and to check each site’s requirements. That information can be found on the DHSS COVID-19 website. It’s important to note that each site has different rules; some healthcare facilities only take their own patients; other sites may or may not require a medical referral; and some will not accept medical vouchers. The actual testing process is simple; at the Lake Otis site on Providence’s property, once a person’s registration December 2020 | 41
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“I am very proud of the work we have done together, from our healthcare partners to DHSS and others,” says Audrey Gray, lead public information officer of the Anchorage Emergency Operations Center. “We are a well-tested community, which is assisting us in identifying cases early to prevent further spread of COVID-19 in our community.” The state has been so effective, in fact, that it was featured in a September 2020 Wall Street Journal article touting it as one of the most comprehensive COVID-19 testing operations in the nation.
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“People had a lot of questions when they came to the site; for example, we realized that a lot of people didn’t know that they needed to quarantine afterwards. We learned as we went along the types of things that we needed to provide, like informational f liers, that went beyond testing.” Ashley Johnson, Manager, Lake Otis Testing Site
is verified, they receive instructions from a team member, who verifies their identity and then performs the test. “Our sites are using the SARS COV-2 assay with both oral and nasal swabs, though if there are small children, they may do a nasal swab instead of an oral one if needed,” says Gray. “The team members are personable and have even been known to sing Baby Shark to toddlers to make the swabbing process more comfortable,” she adds. “They also help alleviate fears of the children about the process.”
Once testing is complete, patients receive instructions about when they should expect their results and a follow-up email with instructions. If the test comes back positive, they will also receive a call from a nurse, as well as a follow-up call from public health. “While it can take up to seven days to get results, people frequently get them in two to four days,” says Caleb Terpstra, manager of Providence Rehabilitation Services and Outpatient Pediatric Therapies, who serves as supervisor of the Lake Otis site.
He adds that those coming for drivethrough testing can rest assured that it is a safe and efficient process. “We are hyper-careful of the process and protecting the workers, and with more than 32,000 tests [performed] at the Lake Otis location, not one caregiver has been found to have gotten COVID-19 from this station,” says Terpstra, adding that patients remain in their cars and testers are fully outfitted in personal protective equipment. “I’ve been really encouraged by the level of support that we’ve gotten from
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Public and Private Support As with any such endeavor, there was a learning curve at the beginning, and, as more is learned about COVID-19, testing sites are adapting to meet changes in CDC recommendations, as well as to make the process more comfortable for patients and testing staff. “While having enough supplies was a real issue at the beginning, we’re not as worried about that now, though it is still a limited resource, so we need to be careful,” says Terpstra. “We have also expanded the scope of who we test; we’ve transitioned from only testing patients with symptoms to those who are asymptomatic but may need clearance for travel or work.”
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He adds that recently the municipality has asked for testing to include more of the general population, most specifically those people in known high-risk categories. While Providence staff originally worked at the Lake Otis site, it became necessary to find a replacement workforce so employees could go back to work inside the hospital. Providence has since contracted with Fairweather to provide staffing and has also switched from using its own EPIC electronic medical record system to register patients to a web application, called covidsecureapp.com, created by Capstone Clinic, which allows for advanced patient testing, notification, and observation tracking. “Since the introduction of the app, which was developed in record time, we’re seeing wait times significantly reduced,” says Terpstra. The app also provides ways for patients to monitor symptoms, find testing sites, and keep track of their test results. Having people in the field has allowed the state and health professionals to
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learn more about the needs of testing staff and Alaska residents. “While running the drive-through clinic, we learned a lot more about how to keep the staff warm and what needed to be done to keep them protected from symptomatic people; we needed to put in more safety precautions to keep the staff safe,” explains Ashley Johnson, who manages the Lake Otis site and is a continuous improvement specialist for Providence Alaska Medical Center. “There is also a lot of back-end processing that has to occur; a lot of work needs to be done ahead of time, and there’s a lot of work that happens after the patient leaves to make sure that everything is properly processed and prepared to be sent to the state for processing,” she adds. People coming through the site also brought increased knowledge as it became apparent that there were gaps in the information they needed. “People had a lot of questions when they came to the site; for example, we realized that a lot of people didn’t know that they needed to quarantine
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the state—even when we had supply chain shortages at the beginning, the municipality and the state really stepped up with help providing testing kits and supplies and answering questions,” he adds. “They are taking testing very seriously, and it gives me quite a bit of confidence that we’re doing it right in Alaska.”
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Testing location workers in Seward. Providence Health & Services Alaska
“We are a well-tested community, which is assisting us in identifying cases early to prevent further spread of COVID-19 in our community.” Audrey Gray, Lead Public Information Officer, Anchorage Emergency Operations Center
afterwards,” says Johnson. “We learned as we went along the types of things that we needed to provide, like informational fliers, that went beyond testing.” “Every day we made continuous improvements; every day brought something a little different, so we spent a lot of time observing and monitoring and constantly readjusting,” says Terpstra. The one thing that they were not expecting, and were very relieved to see, was just how much support they received from the community. “People had signs in their windows thanking us as heroes, and people dropped off food three or four times a day,” laughs Terpstra. “Our staff was worried about gaining weight! The community support was overwhelming—but in a good way.” 44 | December 2020
Unfortunately, as COVID-19 numbers have started to rise again in Alaska, this type of support is going to be required for the long-term. “In the first 100 days, we did just under 10,000 tests, and since June 23, we’ve done an additional 23,000 tests, just at the Lake Otis site,” says Terpstra. “But in the past couple of weeks, we’ve been seeing daily averages going up, and now we’re averaging 300 to 350 tests per day.” As of mid-October, the state had performed more than 634,000 tests with an average turnaround time of 2.6 days. Some people were being tested for the first time, while others required repeat testing. “I think from a patient experience, things are going really, really well, and the fact that we’ve done this many tests without any of our staff getting
sick tells me that we’re doing a quality job,” says Terpstra. As things continue to change during the pandemic, Bernstein predicts that someday soon, there may be tests that people can take at home instead of having to visit testing sites. “Looking toward the future— it’s hard to know the timing because these tests would need FDA approval—but someday soon COVID tests could be like the home pregnancy tests you buy in the drug store, and for $5 you’ll be able to test yourself at home to see if you have COVID,” he says, adding that there are already dozens of these types of tests in development. In the meantime, Alaska’s testing sites will continue to provide safe, accessible testing to the people of the 49th State.
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Tracking the Pandemic
Contact tracing ramps up as COVID-19 cases continue to increase By Vanessa Orr
B
y late-October, more than 11,600 Alaska residents had tested positive for COVID-19, and the numbers were steadily increasing. Because the virus is so highly communicable, there’s a good chance that those who were infected passed it onto others, who may or may not be symptomatic. Those people, in turn, could be passing it on to more people and so on—making it an extremely difficult virus to contain. To identify potential carriers and slow the spread, the state, working with a number of different partners, instituted a COVID-19-specific contact tracing program to help identify positive cases and get them into isolation, as well as reach out to close contacts of those patients to educate them about the quarantining process.
How Does Contact Tracing Work?
James Evans | Univer
46 | December 2020
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When a person is given a positive COVID-19 diagnosis, case investigators from a variety of organizations attempt to identify every single person who has been in contact with the infected person while they were contagious. According to the Alaska Department of Health and Social Services (DHSS) website, those with COVID-19 are considered contagious starting two days before symptoms occurred, or, if they are asymptomatic, two days prior to receiving a positive test. Those who test positive are asked to provide contact information for anyone with whom they’ve been in close contact, and those individuals are contacted by phone to let them know that they were p o te nt i a l l y exposed, though the person who tested positive is not identified. These people are asked to quarantine for fourteen days and to watch for symptoms. If they leave quarantine or have visitors, contact tracers must then also work to identify any additional individuals with whom they may have come into contact.
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such as if the people were exercising, which puts them at higher risk, or meeting for an extended period of time in a place without good air circulation. “There are lengthy guidelines that the CDC puts out, and we also contact the state epidemiologists to help with more questionable situations,” says Lefferts. “If someone is determined to be at high risk, we schedule them for follow-up testing and quarantine.” According to the DHSS website, as of mid-October, case investigators had been able to contact 95 percent of the positive cases within two hours of the Section of Epidemiology being notified of a positive test. And, as cases continue to rise in the state, contract tracing becomes an even more important step toward preventing Alaskans from getting and spreading this virus. Since Alaska began contact tracing in March, the number of people serving as contact tracers has grown from 75 to approximately 235 people throughout the state. If COVID-19 cases continue on their current upward trajectory, that number could expand to roughly 500 people which would include DHSS
staff, as well as trained professionals working for partner organizations such as the Anchorage Health Department, Anchorage School District, Maniilaq Association, North Slope Borough, CDC Arctic Investigations Program, Yukon Kuskokwim Health Corporation, Alaska Native Tribal Health Consortium, Fairbanks Memorial Hospital, the Alaska National Guard/Air National Guard, the UAA College of Health, and Kenai Peninsula Borough School District, among others.
Training and Technology As the need for contact tracers grew, it became imperative to have a fast, efficient way to train this new workforce. While some organizations, such as the YKHC, established their own training program, many others took advantage of training set up by UAA. “We began having conversations in May with the state about training contact tracers, and since then have expanded our role in supporting their efforts by hiring, onboarding, and deploying surge workforce teams,” says Gloria Burnett, director
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“In addition to identifying people who have been exposed to the disease, we talk to people about the steps they need to take to monitor their health, how to quarantine, and where to get follow-up testing,” says Brian Lefferts, Yukon Kuskokwim Health Corporation’s (YKHC) director for the Office of Environmental Health and Engineering; he oversees the contact tracing team as part of YKHC’s COVID-19 response team. “We also identify people who are at greater risk of developing the disease, and we check in with them regularly and offer additional medical support if needed. Our goal is not only to identify possible infection but to offer support while doing it.” He adds that everyone who is identified is listed in two categories: they are either close contacts or general population contacts. “We try to reach out to both groups, though our main focus is on close contacts, who are defined as being less than 6 feet away from the infected person for more than a cumulative 15 minutes,” he explains, adding that other conditions are also taken into account,
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COVID-19 testing taking place at Yukon-Kuskokwim Health Corporation’s airport tent site. Yukon-Kuskokwim Health Corporation
“As a society, we’re all collectively exhausted by the pandemic, but it’s working on its own timeline. Because of how interconnected we are, individual actions have a collective response. It’s going to take everyone’s efforts to move beyond the pandemic.” Tiffany Zulkosky Vice President of Communications, YKHC
48 | December 2020
of the Alaska Center for Rural Health and Health Workforce. “Our training includes onboarding, job shadowing, working with live calls, and running weekly ECHO sessions so that training doesn’t stop even after someone gets hired.” The 16-hour, self-directed, online training program is offered through the UAA College of Health through a collaborative effort with DHSS’ Division of Public Health. The creation and implementation of the curriculum was developed by the Alaska Center for Rural Health and Health Workforce and the Division of Population Health Sciences, both housed within the College of Health. “The evidence-informed training offers a crash course on the basics of infectious diseases; US and Alaska public health systems; and the principles of contact tracing,” says Kristin Bogue, assistant professor of health sciences at UAA. “It also includes information on HIPAA [Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996] and public health ethics and privacy laws.” Participants also receive an overview of CommCare, a public health
electronic health record recently adopted by the state to document COVID-19 investigations. Once training is complete, contact tracers are assigned to one of three tiers, depending on their level of experience. While there are a lot of people applying to work as contract tracers, Burnett says that there is a specific need for more licensed healthcare professionals. “We need more experienced recruits; we have enough Tier 1 tracers, but we need licensed clinicians, social workers, counselors, and public health professionals with investigative backgrounds to work in the higher tiers, which require more complex skills,” she says. Up until October, YKHC, which began its training before the UAA program became available, only used its own employees as contact tracers. Those employees were provided with training from the State Department of Epidemiology and online training from the CDC. “Now we are recruiting individuals who are familiar with the region and the communities in our region,” says Lefferts, adding that the organization
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Contact Tracing Challenges Even though the names of those who have contracted COVID-19 are not being released, it’s not always easy to get cooperation from those contacted or to reach out to all of the people that may have become infected. “I can’t speak to what ever yone is seeing, but our teams are having to deal with the fact that COVID -19 has become a politicized issue instead of a public health issue, so some of the calls can be challenging,” says Bogue, adding that tracers are trained in motivational inter viewing and effective communication skills to build rapport. “ We appreciate that the state is working with other entities, including their own public relations division, to help the general population understand the purpose of contact tracing as a way to reduce the spread of disease across the state.” Bogue adds that there are other obstacles, including language barriers, blocked or private numbers, people avoiding the phone due to political calls, and cer tain unique circumstances www.akbizmag.com
Keeping Southeast Strong and Healthy
Through the ups and downs in 2020, the resilience of Southeast Alaskans remains evident. From all of us as SEARHC, we’d like to say thank you. Thank you for your dedication to healthy practices like masking, washing your hands, and socially distancing. Thank you to the Southeast business community for your commitment to your trades. Thank you to the frontline workers, in Southeast and across Alaska, who selflessly faced the unknown to keep us safe. Thank you to SEARHC providers and staff who provided exceptional care in over 200,000 patient visits. Thank you all for keeping Southeast strong and healthy in 2020. It is an honor to serve as your healthcare provider. For more information, visit searhc.org.
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December 2020 | 49
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is looking for people with some understanding of medical terms, good interpersonal skills, and the ability to build rapport and trust. “They also need to be very organized, because there is a lot of follow-up required,” he adds. “We record and track all information and there are so many interviews—you need to say on top of things to check all the boxes.” According to YKHC’s Vice President of Communications Tiffany Zulkosky, the corporation is using CARES Act funding to hire additional contact tracers. “We had hoped that Alaska as a state would see COVID-19 cases trending down so that we would not need to deploy additional resources, but, unfortunately, we’re seeing more and more cases,” she says. “Our region, much like the state, had a delayed exposure to the virus because of geographic advantage, especially since much of it is not connected to the road system. But as statewide cases increase, we’re beginning to see widespread transmission and increasing case numbers.”
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College of Health Division of Population Health Sciences _ UAA Alaska Center for Rural Health and Health Workforce
COVID-19 Contact Tracing in Alaska UAA Course Outline Self-Guided Complete this online course consisting of content organized into 3 sessions (approx 16 hours). • Assessment • Contact Tracing Foundations • Technology for Documenting Investigations Industry-Aligned Curriculum Study the most current available information regarding COVID-19 contract tracing. Certificate of Completion Receive a certificate upon successful completion of the course.
Priority Registration Licensed clinicians, nurses, public health professionals and COH students who can commit a minimum of 16 hours per week register at
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Course Waitlist All others can request to be added to our course waitlist at https://bit.ly/AK_COVID_Tracing Inquiries can be sent to uaa_ahec@alaska.edu
50 | December 2020
where the available educational materials that contact tracers are providing don’t apply. “Due to having more communities off the road system than any other state, it can make it a challenge for people to follow the typical guidance we provide for isolation and quarantine,” says Bogue. “Some places do not have the space in their communities for people to be alone; in Anchorage, for example, if a person needs to isolate away from home, we have options such as hotels or motels. This may not be an option in rural communities, and we need to be cognizant of that. “In some geographic regions of Alaska, it’s not easy to get to a healthcare provider, a testing site, or homes may not have running water,” she adds. “Contact tracers have to adjust in the moment, which is why it’s so important for them to have strong communication skills and to provide education relevant to the situation.” She adds that people who need extra assistance are directed to local or regional centers that have more information on local help. As with any phone contact, Burnett says people need to be cautious. “There are a lot of spammers out there who want to take advantage,” she says, giving the example of a voicemail that someone received that didn’t include a callback number. “If someone from the state of Alaska or one of its partners calls you, they will identify themselves, and they will always leave you a callback number. If not, that’s a red flag that something else is going on.” While technology does make the job easier, it also presents its own unique challenges. “Because the mail system is taking a lot longer than pre-COVID, we’re seeing delays in getting our equipment out to remote locations, which is causing delays in getting people onboarded and working,” Burnett says. “Technology is a blessing, but at times it can also inhibit people from getting onboarded more quickly; some people are not as tech savvy, and they’re having to navigate a complex system between two big bureaucratic organizations [the university and the state] to get up to speed.”
What Can You Do to Help? While contact tracers are working hard helping to track and (hopefully) contain the spread of the virus, Alaskans must play their part to keep the population safe, say the state’s healthcare experts. “We need people to put all of their political affiliations aside and understand that this is a public health effort for the betterment of our state,” says Burnett. “If you know you have been exposed, stay home and follow CDC and state protocols. “With the projections we’re seeing right now, it’s clear that far too many people are not taking it seriously,” she adds. “Keep to your social bubbles, wash your hands, practice social distancing, and wear a mask— if you do all of this, it will make all of our lives easier, especially in terms of this work.” Bogue encourages people to visit the DHSS website and data dashboard to educate themselves on the virus and to keep tabs on the current state of COVID-19 in Alaska. The organization also regularly updates its Facebook page with new information and resources. “It’s hard to know when prevention efforts are working, especially when we see cases increasing,” says Lefferts. “But when we talk to people and they say that they feel like they’re being cared for, and that we’re connecting them with the resources they need like hotel rooms, or meals delivered through our partners, or medical care—it’s these little wins that make us feel like we’re being successful.” “Never before has there been a public health emergency that shows us how interconnected we all are,” adds Zulkosky. “The virus doesn’t have legs, but people who get infected do, and we can see how it moves from community to community. “As a society, we’re all collectively exhausted by the pandemic, but it’s working on its own timeline,” she adds. “Because of how interconnected we are, individual actions have a collective response. It’s going to take everyone’s efforts to move beyond the pandemic.”
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A Lot of Logistics Healthcare professionals contemplate COVID-19 vaccine distribution plan By Amy Newman
A
s scientists and medical experts work to develop a COVID-19 vaccine, the conversation has grown to include not just the safety and efficacy of a potential vaccine but the logistics surrounding its distribution as well. Getting vaccines from the manufacturer and into the hands of vaccine providers in Alaska requires a coordinated, collaborative effort among partners in both the public and private sectors. Alaska’s COVID-19 response effort is spearheaded by the Department of Military and Veterans Affairs, the Department of Public Safety, and the Department of Health & Social Services (DHSS), along with the COVID-19 Vaccine Task Force, says Military and Veterans Affairs Incident Commander Bryan Fisher. This collaboration and coordination are important given that the details of rolling out a COVID-19 vaccine are being developed simultaneously with the vaccine itself. Because it is currently unknown exactly when a vaccine will be available or how much will be distributed to each state, Alaska must prepare for several different distribution scenarios. “Initially, states were told to have plans in place for October 2020, and then further information was provided that suggested that limited COVID-19 vaccine doses may be available early in November of 2020 and that the vaccine supply will increase substantially in early 2021,” said Sondra LeClair, emergency program manager with the Division of Public Health Rural and Community Health Systems Bureau, during a September COVID-19 Vaccine ECHO (a videoconference connecting Alaska’s COVID-19 experts with specific audiences about specific topics). “That is the limitation of the information that’s been given about timeline.” Alaska’s COVID-19 plan is being created with guidance from the CDC’s COVID-19 Vaccination Program Interim Playbook for Jurisdiction Operations, says Clinton Bennett, communications director for the Alaska DHSS. Since the plan was still under development DHSS did “not want to release information that has not been finalized and could end up changing, thus potentially confusing the process,” he adds. But the information provided at a series of COVID-19 ECHO informational sessions, along with details about how Alaska’s vaccine program works in general, help paint a picture of what Alaskans might expect when the COVID-19 vaccine finally arrives.
Prioritizing Vaccine Recipients Alaska communities have been practicing social distancing since early 2020, and communities have transitioned in and out of varying levels of shutdowns, causing disruptions across the board. One thing is known for certain: a vaccine will not be available for every person immediately, so with every person affected—which populations will be the first to get it? “When it comes to vaccine allocation, I will say there are a lot of unknowns,” said LeClair at the ECHO in September. Vaccine allocation has two distinct components. One is prioritizing which populations will receive it, which is important when it comes to the COVID-19 vaccine as the federal government anticipates releasing it in phases. The second consideration is how the available vaccine will be 52 | December 2020
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levels, those are some of the elements they have discussed.”
From Manufacturer to Provider How vaccines get from the manufacturer to medical providers depends on whether they're provided by the state or paid for through insurance. For state-provided vaccines, distribution is coordinated through the Alaska State Immunization Program and the VacTrAK system. “Medical providers enrolled to receive vaccine through the Alaska Immunization Program submit a vaccine order through VacTrAK, the State Immunization Information System,” Bennett says. “Alaska Immunization Program staff review and approve the order and forward it to the national distributor warehouse, McKesson, which is in Colorado.” Vaccine manufacturers then ship the vaccine to McKesson, which packs and ships the order directly to providers, he adds. Providers can track their shipments and manage vaccine inventory through VacTrAK. “I keep track of how many vaccines we have in the facility at all times and I have to report that to the state every two weeks, whether it’s the flu vaccine or childhood vaccines or even vaccines for adults,” says Dayna Cook, vaccine coordinator for the Tanana Valley Clinic in Fairbanks. “Then I can order more from the state and replenish our supplies, and within a few days those come our way.” Vaccines acquired through the state Immunization Program are given to patients free of charge, although medical providers can charge administration fees, says Dr. Laura Brunner, medical director of the Fairbanks Memorial Hospital Pediatrics and NICU units. “There is a fee that gets billed by our facility for the actual administration of the vaccine, but the vaccine itself is free to people who qualify,” she says. “The state does give a cap on how much we can even charge for the administration.” Vaccines administered to people— typically adults—who don’t qualify for state-provided vaccines are acquired through a separate purchase program. “That’s our buyer, and she orders our vaccines and they come in direct from the company rather than through the Wash your hands | Socially distance | Wear a mask
“We are working through the logistics right now. There are multiple vaccines in development currently. Some of the new mRNA-based vaccines can be manufactured rapidly but are fragile and require very, very cold storage. The other vaccines will likely be refrigerated and utilize our current process.” Christopher Sperry Clinical Coordinator of Pharmacy Services Bartlett Regional Hospital
state portal, and I distribute them to the [providers] who need them,” Cook says. It is anticipated that the ordering process for the COVID-19 vaccine will go through the state system. “What we know right now—and that could change—but what everybody nationwide is preparing for is that the COVID vaccine will be distributed through the state vaccine program,” Brunner says. “There will likely be tweaks in the process, but we anticipate it will come to the state’s handling site and then come to us in a similar process.” LeClair said guidance from the federal government indicates that the vaccine will be shipped like other stateprovided vaccines. “Shipments will be routed in ways that they hope mirrors the usual vaccine distribution process as much as possible, meaning that this is not going December 2020 | 53
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allocated to the states. Those decisions fall to the CDC’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP), which forwards its recommendations to the CDC director for approval. “[The federal government] has stated that likely prioritized groups will include healthcare and critical workforce who maintain essential functions of society and potentially staff and residents of long-term care and assisted living facilities,” LeClair said. According to the CDC’s vaccination playbook, decisions regarding initial priority groups had not yet been finalized but were anticipated to include healthcare workers likely to be exposed to, or treating patients with, COVID-19; individuals at increased risk of developing severe illness from COVID-19, including those with underlying medical conditions and those age sixty-five and older; and other workers essential to maintaining critical infrastructures, such as law enforcement and other first responders and educators. The CDC has indicated that the vaccine is likely to be distributed in three phases. The first phase would include a limited supply and be made available to identified critical populations. Phase 2 would see a larger supply of available vaccines administered to populations outlined in Phase 1 and the general population. In Phase 3, a sufficient supply of the vaccine would be available and administered equitably to all residents. “We anticipate that the first phase will be a small quantity released to targeted populations,” LeClair said. “We have no idea how much will actually come to the state.” Decisions about how the vaccine will be allocated to states are also determined by ACIP recommendations. “The allocation of the COVID-19 vaccine to states and jurisdictions will be based on multiple factors,” LeClair said. “Some of the elements [the federal government] will consider, according to some of their guidance, are populations that are recommended by ACIP. So whoever has some of those larger populations for that priority for the vaccine. They may look at the current local spread and prevalence of COVID-19. And of course, depending on the production and availability
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“[The federal government] has stated that likely prioritized groups will include healthcare and critical workforce who maintain essential functions of society and potentially staff and residents of longterm care and assisted living facilities.” Sondra LeClair Emergency Program Manager Division of Public Health Rural and Community Health Systems Bureau
to be routed through a strategic national stockpile and into a single warehouse in the state for further distribution,” LeClair said during the ECHO. “That’s not the intended distribution of this; it’s intended to be routed through that vaccine immunization program process.” Ancillary supplies needed to administer the vaccine are also part of the distribution process. “When they speak about ancillary supply kits, they are talking about needles, syringes, alcohol prep pads, vaccination record cards, and what they call a minimum supply of personal protective equipment, [which] is likely to include surgical masks and face shields for vaccinators,” LeClair said. “The federal government has indicated that the supply kits will ship separately but are meant to be timed in conjunction with vaccine shipments.” 54 | December 2020
Vaccine Storage and Record-keeping Vaccines have specific guidelines for storage, from both a medical and administrative standpoint. Because this vaccine is still under development and it is unknown which vaccine or vaccines will ultimately be distributed, the CDC has advised states and medical providers to prepare for multiple storage scenarios. “We are working through the logistics right now,” says Christopher Sperry, clinical coordinator of pharmacy services at Bartlett Regional Hospital in Juneau. “There are multiple vaccines in development currently. Some of the new mRNAbased vaccines can be manufactured rapidly but are fragile and require very, very cold storage. The other vaccines will likely be refrigerated and utilize our current process.” Cold-chain storage and handling requirements for COVID-19 vaccines currently in development will vary, LeClair said in September. “There are generally three different temperature ranges that have been shared with us as potential temperature ranges of the vaccine,” she said. “One would be refrigerated, so that’s 2°C to 8°C; frozen, -20°C; or ultra-cold, -60°C to -80°C. We do not know which one will be distributed, but they are providing those three potential temperature ranges.” The temperature requirements associated with different vaccines dictate the shipping method. “McKesson packs the vaccine, ships it, usually via FedEx, in a temperaturecontrolled container. The shipments have a certain number of days to reach their destination and still be within the appropriate temperature range inside the container,” Bennett says. “There is a different process and shipping container to maintain freezer temperatures while the vaccine is in transit. The frozen vaccine orders are forwarded directly to the vaccine manufacturer, instead of McKesson, and the vaccine manufacturer ships the frozen vaccine directly to the provider via UPS.” In addition to ensuring vaccines are stored at the proper temperature, vaccines ordered through the state Immunization Program must either be
stored separately from those purchased directly from the manufacturer or be clearly identified. “Purchased vaccines are unpacked and stored separately, or, if they are going to be anywhere near each other, they need to be labeled,” Cook says. “That’s a requirement by the state.” Vaccine providers must also adhere to federal and state administrative requirements. “A provider must meet all rules and requirements set by the CDC and the Alaska Immunization Program and are required to complete annual training and education,” Bennett says. “If the provider continues to not adhere to all rules and requirements, the Alaska Immunization Program can un-enroll the provider and remove their statesupplied vaccine.” While the state anticipates it will be able to use its existing distribution and ordering process once the COVID-19 vaccine is available, the Alaska Immunization Program manager is updating the VacTrAK system. “We’ll be enhancing VacTrAK to do a little bit more in terms of its function in terms of scheduled appointments,” Alaska Immunization Program Manager Matt Bobo said during the September ECHO. The enhancements are necessary due to the anticipated vaccine dosage requirements. The federal government expects the COVID-19 vaccine to require two doses, spaced twenty-one to twenty-eight days apart, LeClair said. Part of the update to VacTrAK is to help providers to remind patients to come in for their second dose at the proper time. Despite the required enhancements and the uncertainties surrounding the vaccine distribution date and the ultimate prioritization of vaccine recipients, the systems already in place should ease the transition. “I think there are still a lot of unknowns that we’re working through,” said Kelsey Pistotnik, deputy program manager with the Alaska Immunization Program during the September ECHO. “I think it’s really exciting that we are able to leverage all the systems that the immunization program already has in place, so I think that we are in a really great position to roll this out throughout our state.”
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CAUTION It All Starts with Safety HSE professionals help protect Alaska’s oil and gas workers By Amy Newman
56 | December 2020
Alaska Business www.akbizmag.com
Pakorn_Khantiyaporn | iStock
OIL & GAS
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hether on the North Slope or a rig in Cook Inlet, working in Alaska’s oil and gas industry is a high-risk endeavor. The state’s largest remote workforce faces dozens of potential dangers every day: explosions and fires, confined spaces, exposure to hazardous chemicals, the potential for slips and falls… the list is long. And compounding these dangers are frigid temperatures, whiteout conditions, daylong darkness, and even the occasional wandering polar bear. So, it’s not hyperbole to say that one of the oil and gas industry’s top priorities is protecting the health and safety of both its employees and the environment by implementing safety protocols that minimize the risks and help mitigate damage should an incident occur. Engaging the help of health, safety, and environment (HSE) specialists is a critical part of creating and implementing effective safety protocols. “A health, safety, and environmental professional is a competent person when it comes to industrial health, occupational safety, and environmental compliance,” says Ezequiel Chalbaud, director of QHSE at Fairweather. “HSE professionals look after the health, safety, and well-being of their fellow workers, the HSE management systems that drive regulatory compliance, and best practices within their organization.” It’s a complex job description that requires a diverse skill set. “On any given day, an Alaskan oilfield HSE professional could wear many, many hats,” says Carrie Whitfield, project manager with the Alaska Safety Alliance. “They may be performing administrative office tasks and ten minutes later they are across the field taking air samples to ensure workers aren’t entering dangerous spaces.” Their exact roles and defined responsibilities vary depending on the size and scope of the project, the organization, and the size of the HSE team itself, but all HSE professionals play a crucial role in ensuring the health and safety of Alaska’s oil and gas workers.
“The sooner you involve the HSE advisor, the smoother the overall job will go. Detailed pre-planning is one of the most effective ways you can fully utilize advisors and make the greatest impact on preventing incidents, accidents, and/or project delays.” Carrie Whitfield, Project Manager, Alaska Safety Alliance
working to promote a safe workplace environment, and serving as models of appropriate HSE behaviors. They acquire the requisite knowledge through a mixture of education, training, and on-the-job experience. “A lot of the HSE professional’s skill set in this industry is gathered over time,” Chalbaud says. “Practical experience in the field, ideally under strong mentorship from senior HSE professionals, is extremely valuable.
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And when this is complemented with formal education and training, you get the best of both worlds.” The educational background of HSE professionals can range from single courses on specific subjects and professional certifications to an associate, bachelor’s, master’s, or doctorate degree. “There’s an ‘alphabet soup’ of HSE credentials out there,” Whitfield says. “While some HSE professionals attain
Alaska Business
December 2020 | 57
“A lot of the HSE professional’s skill set in this industry is gathered over time. Practical experience in the field, ideally under strong mentorship from senior HSE professionals, is extremely valuable. And when this is complemented with formal education and training, you get the best of both worlds.” Ezequiel Chalbaud, Director of QHSE, Fairweather
skills starting in an academic setting, often people working in safety find themselves in HSE after moving from various field positions and then later obtain official HSE credentials.” Although HSE professionals are responsible for implementing policies that promote a workplace culture of health and safety and reduce occupational and environmental risk, the precise role they play within an organization changes depending on specific circumstances. “The role of an HSE professional is not a one-size-fits-all and varies by
company and industry,” says Drew Laughlin, the safety, health and environmental program director for Ahtna Netiye’. “The skills needed by an HSE professional must include good communication, industryspecific qualifications/certifications, a combination of hands-on and formal education, and the ability to solve problems and apply critical thinking.” Because HSE professionals must help employees understand complex, technical safety rules and regulations, the ability to effectively communicate is a particularly important skill.
“Given that HSE professionals interact with personnel at all levels of the organization, from the laborer to the executive, and have to handle a complex set of tasks and information, they need to be well-rounded individuals that can communicate effectively, both in written and oral form,” Chalbaud says. HSE workers must also be nimble enough to handle evolving workplace conditions and regulatory requirements, as well as have the ability to earn their colleagues’ respect. “Regardless of their background, an HSE professional must be a
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great mentor with unwavering integrity,” Whitfield says. “To have this, you must be honest, detailed, often stubborn yet respectful, patient, always willing to learn, and supportive of new ideas. Continuous improvement is an integral mindset for any safety person, always asking, ‘How do I make the process more efficient and safer?’” T here is no set size for a company’s HSE team: “An HSE depar tment size can var y greatly, depending on the size of a company, project , and company or client needs,” L aughlin says . “Just as an HSE professional is not one size -fit s-all, the HSE depar tment varies depending on need.” Teams may be comprised of internal hires, outsourced to a subcontractor, or a combination thereof depending on several factors, including the specific project and expertise needed for that project. “Like many oil field positions, this is determined by the availability of experienced hires, project timelines, and the business model of each company,” Whitfield says. “Whenever
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possible, most companies prefer to retain and rehire direct employees. However, companies may subcontract their advisors, especially for short term projects.”
Creating a Safer Environment “Strong HSE systems are like an immune system for an organization,” Chalbaud explains. “It serves as an early warning system that identifies potential threats and controls and mitigates them appropriately to reduce incidents, whether they’d be injuries or other types of losses.”
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Ideally, that “immune system” begins with organizations taking a proactive approach to safety that looks to prevent incidents from occurring. “HSE professionals oversee or use a variety of preventative measures… pre-planning the work, with safety being at the forefront,” says Andy Postishek, HSE manager/corporate safety, health and environmental program manager for Ahtna Netiye’ and Ahtna Construction & Primary Products Company. “Most HSE professionals [also] follow the widely used risk elimination, reduction, and/
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“The role of an HSE professional is not a one-size-fits-all and varies by company and industry. The skills needed by an HSE professional must include good communication, industry-specific qualifications/certifications, a combination of hands-on and formal education, and the ability to solve problems and apply critical thinking.” Drew Laughlin, SHEP Director, Ahtna Netiye’
or mitigation strategy.” This includes eliminating the risk or hazard; introducing engineering controls to minimize the risk, such as guardrails or ventilation; employing administrative controls, such as training and increased signage that identifies the risk; and use of personal protective equipment, he explains. Inspection and audit programs and safety observation programs are other typical preventive programs HSE specialists may use in the oil and gas industry. “[There is] no better prevention effort than being present in the field where the work is actually being done,” Chalbaud says. “Like they say, where the rubber meets the road.” That means that HSE workers can expect a mix of office and fieldwork. “Time in the office environment versus the field will vary,” Laughlin says. “Many HSE professionals see a split of their time that is affected by the work season. For example, HSE professionals in Alaska often work over seven months of the year in an office environment on project planning, proposals, and providing training. When the work season begins, they are often in the field working directly with the work crew, as part of their team, ensuring that the work planned is executed and performed safely.” Every element is important, Whitfield says, and determining the proper balance is similar to maintaining a work/ life balance. “Often you do what demands prioritization at the time,” she says. “The office work, data, and documentation are essential to safety in the field. [But] in the event of an incident, the accident investigation is going to take precedence over something like filing 60 | December 2020
training rosters from your morning training session.” Collecting and analyzing on-site data is another preventative measure that helps minimize or eliminate risk. “One of the most effective prevention measures organizations can implement is a safety observation program which engages the worker in identifying hazards and at-risk behaviors in their work area and requires them to help in the solution and mitigate the hazard,” Chalbaud says. Information from these observations is then fed into a database that lets the organization track trends that give a general direction to risk reduction efforts. For example, if data showed a risk trend regarding confined space entry, the organization would know to focus on risk reduction efforts toward that specific area.
Alaska Specific Safety Sourcing employees with the necessary HSE experience and expertise to work in Alaska’s oil fields can be a challenge. “Alaska has a limited credentialed talent pool in a lot of career fields, including HSE,” Whitfield says. “During large ramp-ups or turn around projects, this often results in recruitment of workers from outside Alaska.” Also, working in such a remote location can have a detrimental effect on an employee’s physical and mental health. “Employees on the Nor th Slope are a long way from home — even those that live in Alaska,” Whitfield says. “It can be an ongoing challenge to keep workers focused, physically healthy, and mentally prepared for new work in a potentially hazardous environment.”
Alaska’s terrain is another factor that poses unique health and safety concerns. “HSE professionals working in the Alaska oil and gas industry should have knowledge and an understanding of the weather extremes and work within them, wildlife concerns, longer work shifts, rotational work schedules, [and] the variety of not only oil and gas industry hazards but also that of construction and general industry hazards,” Postishek says. Responsible environmental stewardship also takes on heightened importance in Alaska. “Operating in the Alaskan Arctic requires a high standard of environmental practices and protocols to ensure minimal disturbance to the natural setting,” Chalbaud says. “Respecting the land and the people that depend on it must be a strong value for any oil and gas organization doing business in the region. People have inhabited these lands for thousands of years prior to the discovery of oil and gas, and their traditional subsistence lifestyle lives through tradition, and ensuring the land can sustain future generations of Native Alaskans is of the highest importance.” Despite the variables among department size, project scope, and defined duties, taking a proactive approach and involving HSE professionals as early as possible is the best way to secure a safe, hazard-free work site. “The sooner you involve the HSE advisor, the smoother the overall job will go,” Whitfield says. “Detailed preplanning is one of the most effective ways you can fully utilize advisors and make the greatest impact on preventing incidents, accidents, and/ or project delays.”
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T R A N S P O R TAT I O N
Getting Creative with Cargo
Alaska’s transportation companies keep the cargo coming
Kerry Tasker
By Julie Stricker
62 | December 2020
Alaska Business www.akbizmag.com
F
or several days last spring, Anchorage Ted Stevens International Airport was the busiest airport in the world. Those days are outliers, a result of global shutdowns related to the COVID-19 pandemic, but they are an indication of the importance of cargo transportation in Alaska, according to Jim Szczesniak, airport manager. “We are currently ranked number six in the world for cargo operations,” Szczesniak said in October. About 2.8 million tons of cargo passes through the airport each year. This year, the coronavirus pandemic increased that number, he says. For the second quarter in 2020, cargo was up 14.5 percent, or about 900 tons. In addition, Anchorage now serves more daily destinations using wide-body freighters than before the pandemic—about thirty-one markets, up from about twenty-one or twentytwo, Szczesniak says. The airport itself is responsible for one in ten jobs in the Anchorage area, with a $1.8 billion economic impact annually. In total it provides roughly 22,000 jobs throughout Alaska. Szczesniak says the airport is looking to keep that growth going and has several projects coming online in the next two to three years. Those projects, as well as fleet upgrades and new technology for air, land, and sea shippers, are key to keeping the state's bustling cargo operations healthy and growing.
Air Cargo Anchorage’s location is crucial, as are the economics of cargo. Anchorage is roughly the same distance from New York City as it is from Tokyo, which puts the airport within a 9.5-hour flight from 90 percent of the industrialized world. Passenger planes and cargo planes are essentially the same, Szczesniak says, but cargo weighs more. “What they’ll do is they will fill the plane to its maximum capacity with cargo, and that only allows them to fill the tanks about halfway with fuel,” he says. “So they’ll fly in from Asia to Anchorage, refuel, and from there they’ll take it to North America, or vice versa. It allows them to maximize their revenue per flight by stopping here in Anchorage.” www.akbizmag.com
Most planes just refuel and continue to their destination, but because of legislation by former Alaska Senator Ted Stevens, the airport is exempt from Jones Act cargo transfer restrictions. That means a foreignbased plane and an Americanbased plane can meet on the ramp in Anchorage and transfer cargo to increase efficiencies. To date, almost all cargo that comes through Alaska originates from Outside, but a proposed $200 million, 700,000-square-foot cold storage facility may change that. The Alaska Energy Authority is overseeing the project, which started off with a $21 million grant issued through the Better Utilizing Investment to Leverage Development (BUILD) fund. When it’s completed in two to three years, it will benefit two of Alaska’s rare exports, Szczesniak says. “It’ll be very helpful to the seafood industry and also potentially for peonies,” Szczesniak says. “It would give the seafood industry the ability to better store stuff here that’s processed up here so they can distribute it to Asia.” It also would help offset a general trade imbalance in air cargo. When planes pass through from Asia to North America, they’re typically full, he says. But on the return trip, those planes are usually only about half-full. “So we’ll have that ability to expand or better serve markets in Asia from the Alaska seafood perspective because we can get stuff there a lot quicker,” Szczesniak says. “That works for the peony flowers too because they have to be refrigerated before being distributed. The storage facility also has potential for us to do a little more in the pharmaceutical distribution chain because pharmaceuticals are very temperature sensitive. So having a facility like that helps with all three of those segments.” A more immediate benefit for Alaskans is fresher produce. “We have a lot of aircraft that come from Latin America and the California area that go through Anchorage on their way to Asia,” he says. “So, when they started building this thing, I told the people who were involved that I’d really love it if my raspberries lasted more than a day. There’s tons of Alaska Business
“We’ll have that ability to expand or better serve markets in Asia from the Alaska seafood perspective because we can get stuff there a lot quicker… That works for the peony flowers too because they have to be refrigerated before being distributed. The storage facility also has potential for us to do a little more in pharmaceutical distribution chain because pharmaceuticals are very temperature sensitive. So having a facility like that helps with all three of those segments.” Jim Szczesniak, Airport Manager Ted Stevens Anchorage International Airport
December 2020 | 63
The Leavitt/Aveogan is named for Oliver Leavitt, one of the original members of Arctic Slope Regional Corporation’s board of directors; the tug portion of the ATB is called the Aveogan, which is Leavitt's Iñupiat name. Crowley
perishables on airplanes going to Asia, so with this facility, it might give us a better opportunity to take some of the perishables off the plane and bring them to the Alaska market.” The airport has also negotiated a lease with 6A Aviation, which is planning to build a 500,000-square-foot cargo transfer facility and a 300,000-squarefoot air cargo warehouse. Both FedEx and UPS are also planning major expansions, Szczesniak says. “In total, those projects are going to be in the neighborhood of over $700 million,” he says. “And that’s all private investment.” Szczesniak says the Anchorage airport has also recently partnered with Pittsburgh International Airport to help maximize its cargo hub and spoke. “We’re looking for new markets,” he says. “The Pittsburgh airport has great facilities, convenient to the Northeast, the Southeast, and Midwest. So we’re going to be working with the Pittsburgh airport to try and grow that market.” 64 | December 2020
On the Ground Things have been a bit quieter on the ground, as far as Alaska cargo goes. One big change involves the consumer shift to online shopping. FedEx and UPS both have full sorting facilities at the airport, and DHL is another prominent cargo shipper with facilities in Anchorage, Szczesniak says. “UPS and FedEx will come out of multiple markets in Asia, arrive in Anchorage and take all the stuff out of the plane, put it in their sort matrix, and then they have the ability after that to take a couple of airplanes that are going to the Memphis or Louisville area, a couple going to the California area, a couple to the East Coast, a couple to the Midwest, so they can more efficiently distribute their goods through their networks without flying everything to Memphis or Louisville.” Amazon also uses the Anchorage airport, and the online retail behemoth recently added a second flight. “What we’re seeing is just from an e-commerce perspective,” Szczesniak
says. “It was growing at an exponential rate prior to COVID, and it’s just continuing to accelerate.” Package tracking technology also has advanced in the past few years. Consumer online shopping has been at holiday season levels this year, according to Joe Michel, executive director of the Alaska Trucking Association. Except for oil and gas, which come in through the ports of Whittier and Seward, the majority of consumer goods enter the state through the Port of Alaska, Michel says. And while there has been a drop in freight overall because of a slowdown on North Slope projects, shipments of consumer goods, such as food, have remained steady. There has been a downturn in durable goods, such as kitchen appliances, because many manufacturers slowed production due to COVID-19. But demand remains strong. “They’re moving freight at a holiday pace,” Michel says. “There’s
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“They’re moving freight at a holiday pace… There’s a major uptick in deliveries to their door. The changes are all in that last mile of delivery.” Joe Michel, Executive Director Alaska Trucking Association
a major uptick in deliveries to their door. The changes are all in that last mile of delivery. “Most of that technology has been driven by online companies that ship using FedEx or UPS,” Michel says. “Cargo is received off the plane or received off the ship and they’ve contracted out a lot of independent contractors, who are working with FedEx or UPS, [who are out] delivering packages to your door.”
On the Water For most of the state, the only way to deliver goods is by air or water. For bulk cargo, such as fuel, water is by far the most efficient means and companies such as Crowley have decades of experience doing so. In September, Crowley delivered 4 million gallons of fuel to Eareckson Air Station on Shemya, located at the western edge of the Aleutian Islands. It was a challenging delivery, made more difficult after a North Pacific storm destroyed the island’s dock earlier in the summer, according to Rick Meidel, vice president and general manager of Crowley Fuels. “They had built a new dock and a new dock face and the storm literally dismantled it,” he says. “We had to make sure we had a safe landing area and could tie off safely.” Dropping anchor in that bay isn’t possible because of unexploded www.akbizmag.com
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Aerial view of the Leavitt/Aveogan, a 100,000 barrel articulated tug-barge (ATB), at Bollinger Shipyards in early 2020. Crowley
ordinance from World War II, he says. Getting in and out is dependent on the weather, and the Aleutians are subject to frequent storms, high winds, and waves. “It’s got to be one of the most austere weather environments you could ever experience.” Since dropping anchor wasn’t a viable option, Crowley’s Alaska fuel division and its government solutions division teamed up, and Crowley used its ocean-going tug, Sea Prince, and a 52,000 barrel barge to get the fuel to the remote island. Once there, crews had to lighter the fuel from an articulated tug-barge (ATB) the company contracted to move it to shore and finally to the air station’s storage tanks. Crowley has delivered fuel to this remote outpost since 1956. Eareckson is home to a radar installation and aircraft refueling station and is staffed by 180 service members, contractors, and civilians who rely on Crowley’s twice-yearly fuel deliveries. And while the 2020 delivery was challenging, but successful, Crowley has some new innovations coming in 2021 that will make its operations more efficient, according to Meidel. Its new 55,000-barrel ATB Aurora/ Qamun is designed for the challenging conditions found throughout western Alaska and the Arctic. The ATB is 66 | December 2020
designed specifically to improve efficiency, maneuverability, and operational capability in the region. It’s the second ATB Crowley commissioned in 2020 meant to operate solely in the Alaska market. In April, Crowley dedicated a 100,000-barrel ATB named Oliver Leavitt, in honor of Arctic Slope Regional Corporation’s former chairman. The tug is named Aveogan, Leavitt’s Iñupiat name. Crowley will operate the 483-foot ATB for Alaskabased Petro Star Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of ASRC, under a longterm charter. Jensen Maritime, Crowley Shipping’s Seattle-based naval architecture and marine engineering subsidiary, designed Aveogan/ Oliver Leavitt to meet ice class and polar code requirements, including increased structural framing and shell plating and extended zero discharge endurance, according to a news release. The double-hull vessel is designed to increase cargo capacity with minimal draft. One of the advantages of using an ATB is the flexibility of the unit, Meidel says. “Because they operate together, we can operate in more inclement weather and in higher waves,” he says. “It turns easier, it maneuvers easier.”
In an ATB, the vessels are linked as one unit via a pin and groove system instead of a tow line, Meidel says. It’s a welcome change, says Crowley’s Cargo Operations Manager Anthony Morris. “The crew of the ATB will be able to go into the harbor, turn, look at the weather, and decide whether they can actually make it to the dock and exit without having to get alongside,” Morris says. “It gives us a bigger window of opportunity, improves our operational efficiency, and, most importantly, further improves upon the already safe methods developed by Crowley.” It’s the next step for the company as it updates its fleet of seven tugs and ten barges that operate in western and northern Alaska. Crowley’s “mosquito fleet” serves 288 communities, many of which are only reachable by small vessels. Crowley also upgraded its dock in Kotzebue this year, a $5.3 million project that extended the dock by 30 feet and added additional weight capacity. “We’re a critical part of the community and we’d like to be an integral part of the community as well,” says Meidel. “More than a third of our workforce is Native Alaskans. They know well the challenges of their communities and they know how best we need to serve them.”
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It’s All Connected How the Internet of Things is rewiring our facilities By Isaac Stone Simonelli
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he Internet of Things (IoT) is rapidly evolving and becoming a standard part of new commercial and residential buildings. Property owners and managers have integrated more and more technology directly into commercial spaces to improve workplace environments and increase efficiencies, as well as collect highly valuable data that allows them to make better choices. IoT is the next evolution of smart buildings, allowing smart devices and sensors to communicate through an online system, explains Siemens Industry General Manager for Alaska and Hawaii Dan Hart, though the modern concept of a smart building started gaining traction in the ‘90s. “There was a big movement to move buildings into an electric interaction,” he says, explaining that most heating systems were controlled by pneumatic air systems at the time. In a pneumatic air system, as the air temperature in a building warms or cools, a spring in the thermostat expands or shrinks accordingly, forcing air pressure to move a heating valve up and down. They worked, but the technology was somewhat primitive and definitely limited. Many buildings with pneumatic air systems were upgraded to electric; this electrification of infrastructure also facilitated a move toward direct digital controls. “You had electric actuators, and they were connected to systems that were called direct digital control systems,” Hart says. “It was still pretty basic, but there was some kind of level of interaction with a PC.”
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The fire department in Dusseldorf is an example of a highly integrated smart building. Siemens
This meant that by the mid-‘90s building owners or operators could monitor and control a structure’s temperature remotely. For about a decade, buildings were designed or updated with various systems that could be controlled remotely but existed in isolation. The next step was getting these systems to interact with each other—and their operators. “You've got these different systems from different manufacturers that are now talking to one another and coordinating their interaction in the building,” Hart says. A strong example of this in Alaska is at UAF, Hart says: several systems in a number of buildings work in conjunction with each other through a server. The benefit of intra-network systems is that a building manager 70 | December 2020
or systems specialist can access the server and identify issues with the building. Particularly in Alaska, this can help address problems with energy efficiency; however, operating and maintaining such systems still requires a trained professional. “The difference now is we're trying to get interaction between people and buildings without having to have any kind of deep knowledge of either these kinds of advanced systems or really any deep knowledge of how a building works,” Hart says. “The IoT environment, really, what it's providing is a more user-friendly interface for information that people may care about.”
The Data That Matters IoT interactions are common in commercial spaces with reliable sensors that are connected to an electrical or
digital system. These sensors allow for the control of temperature, humidity, lights, and security systems access, as well as metering for overall electricity and natural gas usage. The ability to tie a building’s energy performance directly to its energy usage is highly valuable: especially in a state known for its high energy costs, wasted energy can be damaging to an entity's bottom line. Siemens estimates that 30 percent of energy, on average, is inefficiently or unnecessarily used. But data left in a void doesn’t help anyone or anything. “The next step was, okay, we’ll get the data out, massage it in the cloud, and then send information back,” Hart says. Hart provides an example of how smart technology can improve workflow: traditionally, maintenance personnel for a commercial building
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might check air filters every few months to ensure they don’t need replacing. Once they do need to be replaced, the maintenance person would most likely fill out a form and submit it to the procurement office, which would then order the necessary filters. Once the filters have been shipped and arrived, the procurement office would need to update the maintenance person, who would pick up the new filter and replace the old one. Alternatively, a building with an integrated IoT system would identify that the filter needs to be replaced, order the new filter, and notify maintenance personnel when the new filter arrives. In fact, Siemens estimates that facility staff spend more than 45 percent of their time troubleshooting programs and managing system repairs. A robust smart building can significantly reduce that amount of time, allowing workers to focus on issues that can’t be monitored or attended to by AI (artificial intelligence). And the benefits go beyond simple maintenance: an advanced smart building is capable of helping businesses reduce capital and operational expenses, increase asset efficiency, optimize security, and grow revenue, Hart explains. He identifies the Anchorage School District as another example of successful IoT system integration. “They're really focused on natural gas and electricity [usage] for every single school in the school district,” Hart says. “That's kind of a big undertaking because the Anchorage School District is like more than ninety buildings.” By collecting energy use data from each school and compiling it in the cloud, administrators are able to plot usage trends to determine ways to save taxpayers’ money. These data points are becoming increasingly important as climate change impacts temperatures in Alaska. “The temperature that we use to design a building for in Anchorage is different than the temperature we used to design it for, you know, thirty years ago,” Hart says. To maximize efficiency, building systems need to be flexible and responsive to long-term climate changes. www.akbizmag.com
“Big tech companies, for example, have a hard time competing and hiring and retaining software engineers, and they've learned that they can retain these people better if they have a good workplace experience.” Dan Hart, General Manager for Alaska & Hawaii, Siemens Industry
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A Competitive Edge As with other technology that improves efficiency long-term, an automation system designed to boost a building’s operational efficiencies often has a high price tag during construction. A basic system could increase the cost by roughly 2 percent to 5 percent, Hart says. “If it doesn't need a whole lot of human interaction and it's a standard straight up office building, you're probably closer to that 2 percent number,” Hart says. “If you're looking at a building more like a laboratory... 72 | December 2020
where there's some complexity in the ventilation or you've got to build up a system that is more interactive, that's probably more than that 5 percent.” Hart says he’s seen project owners struggle with the sticker shock of adding several million dollars to the price of a building despite knowing the long-term savings, and it often prevents an organization from choosing to follow through with an integrated IoT system. “It's buying habits of people—it's always been really hard for people to make that investment. Even if they know
it's going to reduce our energy costs by 5 percent year over year for thirty years and it'll pay for itself in the first ten,” Hart says. Infrastructure is expensive and requires significant capital; property owners planning a new building, or even renovating one, generally have set or limited budgets and need to reduce upfront costs. But the competitive edge smart buildings can provide goes beyond energy efficiency—they can create personalized workspaces that boost employee productivity, Hart explains. In this situation, a building has
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Please visit our website aaronak.com to see our completed and ongoing projects. thousands of data points, meaning that lighting and heating can be adjusted to meet an individual’s preferences. “Big tech companies, for example, have a hard time competing and hiring and retaining software engineers, and they've learned that they can retain these people better if they have a good workplace experience,” Hart says. In 2018, Siemens acquired Comfy, a company that specializes in “intelligent workplaces for dynamic businesses.” Comfy designed a platform that allows companies to create more comfortable and efficient workspaces by decreasing the required amount of office square footage, developing feedback loops between employees and facilities, advancing flexible work models, and ensuring building visitors and employees follow safety protocols among other real-time, data-based solutions. Hart says that focusing on building occupants as critical and individual sources of information has been a growing trend for about three years; however, technological advances generally affect all businesses in time, and the evolution of smart buildings— and how they can positively affect a company’s bottom line—will only continue as technology improves. www.akbizmag.com
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INSIDE ALASKA BUSINESS Municipality of Anchorage Acting Mayor Austin Quinn-Davidson has taken the mayoral oath of office, replacing Ethan Berkowitz, who has resigned. The oath was administered in the mayor’s office by Chief Magistrate Judge Deborah Smith. Quinn-Davidson will remain in the office until the next mayoral election in April 2021. Quinn-Davidson is an attorney who was first elected to the Anchorage Assembly in 2018. She is the first woman and first openly gay person to serve as mayor or acting mayor of Anchorage since the municipality was created in 1975. muni.org
Gulkana Village Council | State of Alaska After almost fifty years, the Gulkana Village Council has reached a resolution with the State of Alaska on the return of former village lands and traditional burial grounds. Representatives from Gulkana Village Council and Ahtna, Incorporated joined Governor Mike Dunleavy in Gulkana for a deed signing and parking lot groundbreaking ceremony. The lands were developed nearly eighty years ago without permission of the Ahtna people. gulkanacouncil.org | alaska.gov
ReConnect grant to deploy a fiber-tothe-premises network in the Prince of Wales-Hyder Census Area and Unicom will use $25 million to deploy a fiber-to-the-premises network in Kodiak Island Borough, Lake and Peninsula Borough, Aleutians East Borough, and Aleutians West Census Area. usda.gov
ANHC The Alaska Native Heritage Center (ANHC) has been named one of “America’s Cultural Treasures,” a national initiative from the Ford Foundation that provides grants to support BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, People of Color) arts and cultural organizations severely impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic. This collective effort brings together sixteen major donors and foundations to award $1 million to $6 million grants to twenty different organizations across the country, including ANHC. The “America’s Cultural Treasures” designation recognizes the grant recipients’ unique and vital work, even in the face of historically limited resources and funding streams. alaskanative.net
USDA ReConnect Program
US Small Business Administration
The US Department of Agriculture is investing $46.5 million to provide broadband service in unserved and underserved rural areas in Alaska. This investment is part of $550 million Congress has allocated to the ReConnect Program’s second round. AP&T Wireless will use a $21.5 million
The US Small Business Administration (SBA), in consultation with the Treasury Department, released a simpler loan forgiveness application for Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) loans of $50,000 or less. This action streamlines the PPP forgiveness process to provide
financial and administrative relief to America’s smallest businesses while also ensuring sound stewardship of taxpayer dollars. SBA and the Treasury have also eased the burden on PPP lenders, allowing them to process forgiveness applications more swiftly. sba.gov
Hecla Hecla Greens Creek mine has filed an amendment to its General Plan of Operations to expand its tailing disposal facility by approximately 13.7 acres. The expansion is primarily inside the existing US Forest Service lease area and will allow mine operations to continue past 2031, when the current facility is expected be full. Greens Creek is a major economic and philanthropic pillar in Southeast Alaska—and Juneau’s largest taxpayer and largest privatesector employer. hecla-mining.com
Chugach Electric Chugach Electric has closed the acquisition of Municipal Light & Power from the Municipality of Anchorage, more than two years after Anchorage voters approved the estimated $986 million transaction. The combination of the two utilities is expected to lower long-term rates for all ratepayers in the utility’s service area with an estimated savings of more than $200 million over fifteen years. Chugach has committed to make job offers to all ML&P employees who want to continue their employment following the acquisition. chugachelectric.com
ECONOMIC INDIC ATOR S ANS Crude Oil Production 512,771 barrels 4.6% change from previous month
ANS West Coast Crude Oil Prices $38.06 per barrel 1% change from previous month
Statewide Employment 333,004 Labor Force 7.2% Unemployment
11/2/2020 Source: Alaska Department of Natural Resources
11/2/2020 Source: Alaska Department of Natural Resources
9/1/2020. Adjusted seasonally. Source: Alaska Department of Labor and Workforce Development
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RIGHT MOVES Municipality of Anchorage Austin Quinn-Davidson is Anchorage’s Acting Mayor, replacing Ethan Berkowitz, who resigned; she was selected by the Anchorage Quinn-Davidson Assembly. Quinn-Davidson earned her bachelor’s from the University of California at Santa Barbara and a law degree from the University of California at Davis. As an attorney, she worked for a large law firm as in-house counsel to a bistate government agency and as the legal affairs and land transactions director for the Great Land Trust. Quinn-Davidson was first elected to represent West Anchorage on the Anchorage Assembly in 2018, where she prioritized investments in public safety, supporting working families, and securing disaster relief for Anchorage residents and businesses.
Cornerstone General Contractors Cornerstone announced two new hires: Brittany Larson as an Accountant and Macki McDonald as a Project Engineer. Both join the company with years of experience in the Alaska construction industry. Larson joins the team with more than three years of Alaska construction accounting as well as an extensive customer service Larson background. She is in her final semester at Wayland Baptist University to receive her associates in accounting
and will then pursue her bachelor’s in accounting and finance. Larson is responsible for assisting the accounting department with payroll, accounts payable, account reconciliation, contract compliance, and office support. McDonald brings more than sixteen years of project procurement, logistics, and Alaska construction experience, along with a McDonald strong grasp on remote and complex projects. His construction background began as a laborer for a general contractor in Redmond, Washington, followed by an Anchorage engineering firm until he managed his own construction administration business. As a project engineer, McDonald works directly with Cornerstone project managers, subcontractors, vendors, and clients to ensure projects progress smoothly and are completed successfully.
Fred Meyer Fred Meyer promoted Holly Mitchell to District Manager for Alaska. In her new role, Mitchell is responsible for all retail business across the state. Mitchell Mitchell has lived in Alaska for thirty-eight years, and the position offers her an opportunity to lead at a new level in her home state.
KPMG Julie Schrecengost has been named Tax Practice Leader of KPMG’s Anchorage office. Schrecengost is responsible for supporting the career development of
tax professionals and the strategic direction and growth of KPMG’s Anchorage tax practice. She joined KPMG in 2001 and was promoted Schrecengost to tax managing director in 2012. She provides federal and state tax compliance and consulting services to a variety of corporate and partnership organizations and has extensive experience working with Alaska Native corporations and their unique tax matters including natural resources and settlement trusts. Schrecengost has nearly twenty years of experience serving clients in Alaska with federal and state tax planning and structuring, special consulting projects relating to acquisitions and divestitures, tax provision preparation, and broad tax compliance services.
Alaska Literacy Program Lori Pickett has been named Executive Director of the Alaska Literacy Program. Pickett has a passion for the mission of the organization as well as a deep knowledge and wide range of skills that will ensure her leadership will succeed and the Alaska Literacy Program will thrive despite the challenges of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Northrim Bank Northrim Bank promoted Brian Leonard to Branch Manager II at the Midtown Financial Center; Christina Clayton to Assistant Branch Manager at the Wasilla Financial Center; and hired Johnico BashfordBlumer as Assistant Branch Manager at the Southside Financial Center. Leonard has been with the bank since
RIGHT MOVES IS BROUGHT TO YOU BY NORTHERN AIR CARGO
76 | December 2020
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2011, starting his banking career at the Wasilla Financial Center. He holds a State of Alaska Insurance Producer—Life License. Leonard Leonard was awarded the Northrim Bank Customer First Service Award in 2013. Clayton has been with the firm since 2016. Before joining Northrim Bank, she had more than thirty years of experience in retail sales management. Clayton Clayton holds an occupational associate degree in retail management. She volunteers with the Quilts for Valor Foundation, Junior Achievement of Alaska, and United Way. Bashford-Blumer joins Northrim with eleven years of management experience and five years in the insurance industry. He holds an MBA Bashfordfrom Colorado Technical Blumer University.
Taylored Restoration Taylored Restoration hired Tyler Kirn as Project Manager. Kirn graduated from UAA with a bachelor’s in global logistics and supply chain Kirn management. He brings a background in project management and offers exceptional attention to detail.
MTA MTA welcomes Jared Lindman to its executive team with his promotion to Director of Commercial Solutions, a new department for MTA Lindman focused on developing its enterprise and wholesale markets. In this new role, Lindman oversees the product,
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marketing, and sales delivery strategies of MTA’s wholesale and enterprise customers and partners. Lindman has been an invaluable member of the MTA product team since he began as director of product management in 2017. His unique blend of creativity and energy, combined with his data-driven mindset, have been essential to developing and bringing about new products and services to help keep Alaskans connected.
Key Private Bank Justin Mills joined Key Private Bank as a Relationship Manager. In this role, Mills collaborates with the entire Key Private Bank team to Mills deliver a full continuum of wealth management solutions to clients in high net worth channels. Mills earned an MBA from George Herbert Walker School of Business and Technology, Webster University, St. Louis, and a bachelor’s in government and public affairs from Missouri Western State University in St. Joseph. He is a FINRA Series 7 and 66 license holder, as well as a licensed life and health insurance agent in Alaska.
KeyBank Amy Bex has joined KeyBank as Branch Manager of the Mendenhall branch in Juneau. In this role, she is responsible for day-today operations and coaching her team, as well as providing financial services, including investments and mortgages, to both small business and consumer clients. Bex’s experience is wide-ranging, including sales, lending, hiring and coaching staff, and building relationships, with an emphasis on providing outstanding customer service. Most recently she
Alaska Business
served as assistant vice president and branch leader for BB&T Bank in Crescent Springs, Kentucky. In addition to finance, she has managerial experience in the retail industry and has worked in the education and mental health fields. Bex earned her bachelor’s in elementary education from Morehead State University and a master’s of mental health counseling from Eastern Kentucky University.
Parker, Smith & Feek Ross Goble has joined Parker, Smith & Feek as an Account Executive in its Anchorage office. Goble helps businesses and nonprofit Goble organizations create a unique and comprehensive risk management program for workers' compensation, general liability, property, and auto, amongst other insurance coverages. Goble was most recently an account executive at another insurance brokerage in Anchorage and, prior to that, spent ten years in the Alaska tourism industry. These positions allowed him to travel throughout the state and gave him extensive knowledge of the unique challenges faced by organizations in Alaska. He earned his bachelor’s from San Diego State University and holds a commercial lines coverage specialist insurance designation.
Quintillion Quintillion welcomed the addition of Ariel Burr as Senior Manager of Government Programs and Business Development. Burr is charged Burr with leading the corporation’s efforts to connect rural Alaska communities with better education and healthcare services through the FCC E-rate and Rural Health Care programs.
December 2020 | 77
ALASKA TRENDS
T
he impacts of COVID-19 on Alaska’s economy are myriad, and the combined action plans of federal and state governments in responding to the pandemic have been equally multifaceted. Loan forgiveness programs, relief activity, and early permanent fund dividend distribution are a few of the tactics that government officials employed to keep Alaska’s economy running. Staying abreast of what’s happening during the pandemic—case numbers, statewide health mandates, unemployment statistics—is a daunting task. This month in Alaska Trends we provide an overview of a few key statistics and COVID-19 response efforts. While much of the information is unsettling, there are some positive spots to consider. For example, compared to the beginning of the pandemic, current unemployment numbers have almost been cut in half. And what we can’t see in this data is the incredibly hard work going on behind the scenes to both secure economic opportunities and safeguard the health of every Alaskan.
600
COVID-19 IN ALASKA
The timeline below looks at the health of the economy, Alaska's daily COVID-19 case count, and the state's responses in the first six months of the pandemic.
Statewide Health Mandates
Unemployment 1
Daily Active COVID-19 Cases
Relief Fund Activity
March 19 SBA EIDL available for businesses affected by COVID-19 March 26
400
HB 308 signed by Governor Mike Dunleavy expanding unemployment insurance benefits March 27
April 27
CARES Act signed by President Donald Trump
Additional $310 million allocated to PPP; reopens to loan applications
March 31 Employee Retention Credit launched by IRS
200
April 2
May 12
AK Safe Program launched
$1.5 billion of Alaska CARES Act funds distributed
April 3 PPP applications accepted - small businesses May 28
April 8 AK DNR suspends/ extends certain fees
March 27 Health Mandate 011 orders all Alaskans to stay in place
3/163/173/18
April 10 PPP applications accepted - independent contractors & self employed
3/203/213/223/233/243/25
3/19
3/273/283/293/30
3/26
4/1
3/31
4/4 4/5 4/6 4/7 4/2 4/3
4/8
4/9
AK Cares program grants made available
May 22 Alaska moves to phase 3 allowing for 75% capacity in businesses
4/114/124/134/144/154/164/174/184/194/204/214/224/234/244/254/26 4/284/294/30 5/1 5/2 5/3 5/4 5/5 5/6 5/7 5/8 5/9 5/105/11 5/135/145/155/165/175/185/195/205/21 5/235/245/255/265/27 4/10 5/22 4/27 5/12
5/295/305/31 6/1 6/2 6/3 6/4 6/5 6/6 6/7 6/8 6/9 6/106/116/126/136/146/156/166/176/186/196/206/216/226/236/246/256/266/276/286/296/30 7/1 7/2 7/3 7/4 7/5 7/6 7/7 7/8 7/9 7/1
5/28
20,000
45,776 April Unemployment
40,000 60,000
78 | December 2020
42,378 May Unemployment
42,709 June Unemployment
Alaska Business www.akbizmag.com
IMPACT AND RECOVERY
The first month of the pandemic prompted unemployment claims that broke records, and the long-term effects on the economy will be significant; however, the October 2020 issue of Alaska Economic Trends projects 5.5 percent employment growth for Alaska over the next nine years.
2018-2020 EMPLOYMENT PROJECTIONS FOR ALASKA
Growth despite change
More or less on track
Slower but strong
Restaurants will recover in the long run, growing 12.7% by 2028. Dining preferences will change to reflect increased demand in take-out and delivery options. Population growth will also buoy restaurants in the coming years.
General stores, including warehouse clubs and supercenters, remain strong with an estimated growth of 7.7% by 2028. Miscellaneous retailers, like pet stores and thrift stores, have the hightest projected growth rate of 15.8% by 2028.
Healthcare is still anticipated to experience strong growth with a predicted growth rate of 10.3%. This continues to be twice the projected national rate due to Alaska's aging population and continued expansion into rural hubs.
August 21
July 1
AK Cares program expands eligibility requirements
PFD early distribution
236/246/256/266/276/286/296/30 7/1 7/2 7/3 7/4 7/5 7/6 7/7 7/8 7/9 7/107/117/127/137/147/157/167/177/187/197/207/217/227/237/247/257/267/277/287/297/307/31 8/1 8/2 8/3 8/4 8/5 8/6 8/7 8/8 8/9 8/108/118/128/138/148/158/168/178/188/198/20
8/228/238/248/258/268/278/288/298/308/31 9/1 9/2 9/3 9/4 9/5 9/6 9/7 9/8 9/9 9/109/119/129/139/149/159/169/179/189/199/209/219/229/239/249/259/269/279/289/299/3010/110/210/310/410/510/610/710/810/910/10 10/11 10/12 10/13 10/14 10/15 10/16 10/17 10/18 10/19 10/20 10/21 10/22 10/23 10/24 10/25 10/26
8/21
39,672 July Unemployment
24,217 August Unemployment
23,836 September Unemployment
1
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Alaska Department of Labor and Workforce Development
December 2020 | 79
AT A GLANCE What book is currently on your nightstand? That’s Not How We Do It Here! by John Kotter and Holger Rathgeber. What movie do you recommend to everyone you know? The Blind Side. What’s the first thing you do when you get home after a long day at work? You know I saw this question and thought long and hard about telling the truth [she laughs]. But no, usually I come home and change clothes and sit and listen to music with my husband… with a glass of wine. If you couldn’t live in Alaska, what’s your dream locale? I don’t know if you’d call it a dream locale, but if I couldn’t live in Alaska I would probably live in Nashville with my kids. If you could domesticate a wild animal, what animal would it be?
Images © Whitney McLaren
A porcupine. It’s kind of a joke but I get teased that I’m a lot like a porcupine… I’m a lawyer by trade and have to remember not to go into lawyer mode and be prickly.
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Alaska Business www.akbizmag.com
OFF THE CUFF
Shelley Ebenal S
helley Ebenal’s path to becoming the CEO for Foundation Health Partners, and the Executive
Director and General Counsel for the Greater
AB: Dead or alive, who would you like to see perform live in concert? Ebenal: I know this sounds really bizarre but Beethoven performing "Für Elise".
Fairbanks Community Hospital Foundation, wasn’t exactly conventional. Ebenal spent the majority of her career practicing law, but, following a random phone call from a past employer, she started mulling over a change of scenery: “Dan Winfrey called me out of the blue one day and said, ‘I’m up for the Alaska Supreme Court; if I get it, would you be interested in this job?’” Luckily for residents of the Interior—she was. Having joined the organization during a pivotal time following its decision to leave Banner Health, Ebenal feels a deep commitment to serving Foundation Health Partners and the city that raised her. Alaska Business: What do you do in your free time? Shelley Ebenal: My husband and I do a lot of remodeling. I don’t think I’ve ever lived in a house with my husband that we haven’t destroyed. AB: Is there a skill you’re currently developing or have always wanted to learn? Ebenal: I’ve always wanted to learn to play an instrument, but I just don’t have the talent… probably the piano. AB: What’s the most daring thing you’ve ever done? Ebenal: Get my master’s degree at fifty years old. AB: What’s your go-to comfort food? Ebenal: Cheeseburger.
AB: What’s your greatest extravagance? Ebenal: A few years ago my husband and kids, we took a trip to Italy and we did it completely right. It was an extreme extravagance. My husband is actually Italian and his family is from Sicily, and it was a very cool experience. AB: What are you superstitious about? Ebenal: Karma—what comes around goes around. Treat people how you would want to be treated. Remember what you do is gonna come back at ya. AB: What is your best and worst attribute? Ebenal: My worst attribute is being prickly. My best attribute I think is my compassion for my community. I wasn’t born in Fairbanks, but I was raised here and I was very compassionate about making my community the best possible place I could make it to be. One of the founding fathers of the foundation once said, ‘It’s your duty to leave the place that you work and live better than you found it,’ and I truly believe that.
AB: What’s your favorite way to exercise? Ebenal: Aerobics. Not that I do a lot of it, but that is my favorite exercise. www.akbizmag.com
Alaska Business
December 2020 | 81
ADVERTISERS INDEX Aaron Plumbing & Heating Company............................. 73 aaronak.com Advanced Supply Chain International........................... 57 ascillc.com Airport Equipment Rentals.............................................. 83 airportequipmentrentals.com Alaska529............................................ 9 Alaska529Plan.com
Coffman Engineers........................... 61 coffman.com Conrad-Houston Insurance Agency............................. 59 chialaska.com Construction Machinery Industrial - CMI................................... 2 cmiak.com Delta Constructors........................... 71 deltaconstructors.net
Alaska Communications..................... 3 acsalaska.com
First National Bank Alaska – FNBA............................ 5 fnbalaska.com
Alaska Native Tribal Health Consortium...........................84 anthc.org
GCI.................................................... 23 gci.com
Alaska Railroad Real Estate Division........................... 58 alaskarailroad.com/real-estate
Great Originals Inc............................ 38 greatoriginals.com
Alaska USA Federal Credit Union...... 31 alaskausa.org Altman Rogers & Co......................... 21 altrogco.com American Heart Association.............42 www.heart.org
Jim Meinel CPA P.C........................... 73 meinelcpa.com Katmai Oncology Group.................. 39 katmaioncology.com Lynden Inc........................................ 67 lynden.com
AT&T.................................................. 15 att.com
Material Flow & Conveyor Systems Inc......................69 akflow.com
Avis Rent-A-Car................................ 27 avisalaska.com
Medical Park Family Care Inc...........49 mpfcak.com
Carlile Transportation Systems......... 51 carlile.biz
Nenana Heating Services Inc........... 59 nenanahaetingservices.net
Central Environmental Inc................ 17 cei-alaska.com
New Horizons Telecom Inc.............. 11 nhtiusa.com
Coastal Transportation Inc............... 65 coastaltransportation.com
North Star Behavioral Health............43 northstarbehavioral.com
82 | December 2020
Northern Air Cargo – NAC.............................. 76, 77 nac.aero Northrim Bank.................................. 13 northrim.com Pacific Pile & Marine......................... 75 pacificpile.com Parker Smith & Feek.......................... 55 psfinc.com Providence Health & Services Alaska..............................45 alaska.providence.org Samson Tug & Barge........................ 21 samsontug.com Seatac Marine Service.......................29 seatacmarine.com Southeast Alaska Regional Health Consortium – SEARHC.............................................49 searhc.org Technipress....................................... 35 tpress.net The Lakefront Anchorage................ 35 millenniumhotels.com/en/anchorage/ the-lakefront-anchorage Tutka, LLC.......................................... 19 tutkallc.com United Way of Anchorage.................. 7 liveunitedanchorage.org USI Insurance Services..................... 47 usi.com Valdez Convention & Visitors Bureau..................................29 valdezalaska.org
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Getting back to your activities? Get back to your health care! Missing out on regular activities is a common story across Alaska. As we begin to put dates back on our calendars, remember to put your health care appointments back in too. Chronic conditions like diabetes and high blood pressure don’t take a break during a pandemic. Children still need their well-child visits and immunizations to be protected from diseases. Cancer can still spread undetected and heart attacks can still strike. Your health is important. Specialty clinics managed by the Alaska Native Tribal Health Consortium are prepared to keep our community healthy now and in the future.
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anthc.org/specialtycare
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